Foreigners continue to own just under 1 percent of the nation's agricultural land, a level that has varied little over the years, the Agriculture Department said Thursday. The department's Economic Research Service made its 1989 year-end review of reports under a 1978 law requiring foreigners to register U.S. agricultural land holdings. As of Dec. 31, 1989, about 12.9 million acres of agricultural land were owned by foreigners, an increase of 263,273 acres from a year earlier. ``Foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land remained relatively steady from 1981 through 1989, slightly above or below 1 percent of the privately owned agricultural land in the United States,'' said John Lee, administrator of the agency. Of the land owned by foreign interests, 46 percent was forest land, 18 percent cropland, 31 percent pasture and other agricultural land, and 5 percent agricultural land not under cultivation. Corporations, both U.S. and foreign, owned 81 percent of the foreign-held acreage; partnerships, 10 percent; and individuals, 7 percent. The remainder is held by estates, trusts, associations, institutions and others. Japanese investors owned 2 percent of the foreign-held acreage, while about 73 percent of the total was owned by investors from Canada, Britain, West Germany, France, the Netherlands Antilles, Switzerland and the Netherlands, the report said. Maine continued to have the heaviest concentration of foreign ownership, with holdings of almost 2.1 million acres. The report said that 93 percent of the foreign-owned acreage will remain in agricultural production, according to its owners.
