Chapters 765 and 796 of the 2023 Acts of Assembly established the Foreign Entities and Property Ownership Law (Va. Code § 55.1-507 et seq.) (Law), which, in part, requires the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS), on or before July 1 of each year, to publish a report regarding foreign ownership of agricultural land within the Commonwealth.

As of December 31, 2022, Virginia has a total land area of 25,273,600 acres, 18,789,439 of which are privately-held agricultural land and 274,264 of which are foreign-held agricultural land consisting of 590 parcels in 82 unique localities.

Data from 2012-2022 show foreign holdings comprise a relatively small amount, 1.5 percent in 2022, of privately-held agricultural land in Virginia. A significant trend to note is that acquisitions of agricultural land by foreign owners exceeded dispositions every year from 2012-2022, resulting in the total number of acres of Virginia agricultural land in foreign ownership nearly doubling in that period, from just over 140,000 acres in 2012 to over 274,000 in 2022. Also of note, 2022 had the greatest number of acres both in acquisitions and dispositions of any year in this timeframe, with the dispositions in 2022 exceeding the total amount of dispositions from the previous nine years combined. The bulk of increases in foreign holdings by land use type has been in forestland, which has more than doubled and is up nearly 100,000 acres, from 83,092 acres in 2012 to 181,676 acres in 2022. Cropland acreage in foreign ownership increased 75 percent, from 23,284 acres in 2012 to 40,691 in 2022.

The following are the acres of agricultural and non-agricultural land in Virginia owned by the identified countries of foreign investors in 2022: Canada (41,304), Netherlands (22,957), Italy (2,429), United Kingdom (39,089), Germany (26,432), and All Others (147,041). 40,691 acres of land in Virginia owned by foreign investors are used as cropland, 25,683 as pasture, 181,676 as forest, 26,214 as other agricultural land, and 4,989 as non-agricultural land.

VDACS is not aware of any information regarding the extent of or any recent changes in foreign ownership of energy production, storage, or distribution facilities in the Commonwealth.

VDACS does not recommend any legislative, regulatory, or administrative policy changes in light of the information in this report.