President Trump says more than $20 trillion in foreign investment is flowing into the United States, and he calls it a historic win for the American people. Japan alone has pledged $1 trillion. South Korea, more than $1 trillion. That money builds factories, power plants, and good-paying American jobs.
So why is USDA writing a rule that would make one of those companies think twice before investing alongside an American landowner?
A Japanese or Korean energy company that wants to partner with a family farm on a solar lease should be welcomed. Under USDA's new proposal, it would be buried in federal paperwork and penalty risk instead.
Why is USDA working to discourage the very foreign investment the President is fighting to bring home, while expanding federal authority over the American farmer at the same time?
Conservatives have always stood for a simple idea: if you own it, you decide what to do with it. A family that has worked the same ground for generations doesn't need a federal permission slip to plant corn, run cattle, or lease a corner of the farm for solar.
Washington apparently disagrees.
USDA Wants to Redefine Your Farm
On June 25, 2026, USDA published a proposed rule under the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act, or AFIDA, which requires foreign persons to report their interests in U.S. farmland.
Parts of it target foreign adversaries, and those deserve support. America First Energy Action wants the Chinese Communist Party and every other adversary kept off American farmland. Period.
But the rule reaches much further. It would rewrite the federal definition of "agricultural land" to include solar power generation, along with wind and pipelines. It shrinks the lease exemption from under 10 years to under one year, makes easements reportable, and raises the weekly late-filing penalty for non-adversaries from one-tenth of one percent to 1.5% of the land's value, up to 25%.
The farmer doesn't file the AFIDA report. Foreign persons do, including American companies with significant foreign ownership. But the farmer pays.
A solar lease with a partner from a close ally like Japan or South Korea becomes a federal filing with maps, ongoing updates, and steep penalties. That risk gets priced into the deal. Some offers will shrink. Some won't come at all.
A Solution in Search of a Problem
The real threat is already being handled. The same rule strips foreign adversaries of any lease exemption, no matter how short the lease. CFIUS, the federal committee that screens foreign investment, already has authority to review risky deals. And 32 states now restrict foreign ownership of farmland in some form, up from 14 in 2022, according to the National Agricultural Law Center.
As for solar, USDA says it added it in response to public comment on its advance notice, which drew just 21 comments in total.
So Washington's answer to a CCP problem is red tape for farmers who deal with allies. That's not national security. It's bureaucracy.
Take the rule's logic to its end and it gets absurd. British Petroleum (BP) is a foreign company. If BP leases a farmer's mineral rights to drill for oil and gas, the proposed rule exempts it, because "an interest solely in mineral rights" doesn't have to be reported. But if Lightsource bp, BP's own solar company, leases the surface of that same farm for solar panels, it becomes a federal filing with maps, updates, and penalties tied to the value of the land. Same parent company. Same farmer. Same acres. Either investment from a British company is a threat, or it isn't. Washington can't have it both ways, and it has no business picking which uses of a farmer's land are acceptable.
Today Solar. Tomorrow What?
Here's the bigger danger. Once Washington can redefine what counts as "agriculture," there's no natural stopping point.
The proposed definition already reaches past the field to pipelines, farm warehouses, and slaughterhouses. It even lists solar generation as an "agricultural purpose." If a bureaucrat can reclassify a solar array as farmland for federal reporting, what's next? The panels on a barn roof? The cell tower lease? The data center offer down the road?
Every redefinition hands Washington a new hook into private land. Today it's a reporting form. Tomorrow it's a reason to review, restrict, or say no.
Conservatives shouldn't accept the premise. Washington doesn't get to rename your property so it can manage it.
Property Rights Are the Backbone of Freedom
Private property is the foundation of American capitalism. It's what separates a free citizen from a tenant of the state. The right to own land, work it, and decide what to do with it is woven into the American story, from the homesteaders who settled the frontier to the family farms that feed the world today.
This election season, Republicans are rightly running against socialist policies that would put government in charge of housing, energy, and private business. Voters are being asked to reject the idea that bureaucrats know better than the people who own, build, and work.
So why would a Republican administration's agency put forward socialism lite on the farm? Telling a landowner which uses of his own property are acceptable, and burying the ones Washington doesn't favor in paperwork and penalties, is central planning by another name. Conservatives can't campaign against government control in the cities and quietly expand it in the countryside.
Farming Is Hard Enough
This is the worst time to add burdens. Diesel hit $6.529 a gallon the week of September 21, the highest weekly national price in Energy Information Administration records going back to 1994. USDA projects farm fuel and oil costs will jump 28.8% this year and fertilizer 15.3%, while net farm income falls 5.5% after inflation.
Crop prices haven't kept up. USDA put last season's corn price at $4.15 a bushel, while University of Illinois economists estimate it takes about $4.80 to more than $5.00 to cover the full cost of growing corn there. They project corn losing money in every region of the state this year.
A Check You Can Count On
That's why a solar lease matters. The average U.S. cropland cash rent in 2026 is $160 an acre, according to USDA. In a mid-2026 survey of Illinois farm managers, 62.5% said new solar or wind lease offers ran $1,000 to $1,999 an acre per year. Those leases typically run 25 to 35 years.
That steady income can pay down the operating note or carry a family through a bad year, so the next generation keeps the farm.
Solar and Farming, Same Acres
Solar doesn't end farming. Sheep graze under the panels. The American Solar Grazing Association's census, done with the Energy Department's national lab, counted about 113,000 sheep grazing roughly 129,000 acres of solar across 30 states as of October 2024.
Solar sites can host pollinator habitat and pasture grass. The Energy Department's InSPIRE program studies crops grown right under the panels, and research in Arizona has shown this kind of "agrivoltaics" can increase tomato and pepper yields while cutting water needs.
And when the lease ends, the land comes back. Ohio requires decommissioning plans for large solar projects that restore the land to its pre-construction state, and New York's guidelines require land intended for crops to be restored for production.
Your Land, Your Choice
Keep adversaries off American farmland, and enforce it hard.
Tell USDA to drop solar from the AFIDA definition of agricultural land in the final rule.
And defend the farmer's right to decide. Corn, cattle, sheep, or solar, that choice belongs to the family that holds the deed. Not a bureaucrat who has never made a land payment.
Your land. Your choice. That's not a clean-energy slogan. It's a conservative one.