Why Energy Developers Are Freaking Out Over Trump's Farmland Plans (heatmap.news)

The Trump administration is considering changing its interpretation of an obscure law related to farmland ownership to transform it into a national security instrument with profound impacts for U.S. renewables projects — and fossil fuels. U.S. energy developers and their trade groups are ringing alarms about the plan, arguing that Trump may be about to undermine their relationships with international investors in allied nations. For the past week, I’ve been hearing anxious rumbling from contacts in D.C. about a proposed regulation from the Agriculture Department published on June 26. The plan has gotten little attention so far outside of energy trade publications and wonk analysis. Pay no mind to the relative quiet — anyone working in energy development needs to know what’s at stake. Explaining why this is sending D.C. energy lobbyists into a tizzy gets complicated quickly, so bear with me. But the easiest way to sum it up is a fear of death by a thousand cuts. The administration’s proposal would morph USDA’s approach to the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978, often referred to in legal circles by the acronym AFIDA. This Cold War-era statute created a system for collecting information on farmland owned by people...