Farmland Prices

As commodity prices continued to rise entering 2021, farmland prices followed a similar path higher. Randy Dickhut is the senior vice president of real estate options for the Farmers National Company. He says farmland prices are reaching levels we haven’t seen in several years.

“We flipped the calendar into January and saw that these reports of net farm income were quite a bit better than we onetime thought than earlier in 2020. There were extra CFAP payments and grain prices continued to escalate, and that put more optimism into farmers and a better financial situation with their balance sheets and cash flow. And that translated into some competitive bidding for farmland. We saw some auctions in the winter and early spring that were bumping around those highs of that 2013, early ’14.”

 

He says the run-up in farmland prices is a little stronger than most industry experts predicted.

“I think the buying interest that created the competitive bidding is maybe somewhat stronger than we thought coming out of COVID. There’s increased interest in owning land or real estate, and farmland is a part of that, so not only farmers but we’re getting some new interest from individuals who never owned farmland, so they’re in the market too, and people are also wondering about potential changes in tax policy, and so I think that’s creating some sales and buying interest too.”

 

The higher prices seem to be spread around most of rural America.