Expert Predicts Farmland Demand to Remain Strong

Lorrie Boyer

Reporter

With a solid background in agricultural land transactions. Eric Sarff, president of Murray Wise and Associates, discusses the main trends he is seeing right now, in farmland real estate acquisitions.

“We've definitely seen more consolidation on the pharma side. You know, I've been doing this for a little over 20 years now. And there's still obviously a lot of farmers out there. But there's, there's less now than, than there were 20 years ago. And even longer than that, when I was growing up on the countryside. And when I was young, you know, my dad farms a couple of 1,000 acres. And that was a big, big deal back in the in the 90s. And anymore, that's that's pretty small time. So seeing how consolidation of farms and farm operations while they're still family farms that are just bigger operations, production, productivity, again, corn bushels now yields I mean, they're 250 bushels per acre, which that's unfathomable 20 years ago, or even five years ago, when we were closer to 200. So just seeing the increased productivity in the fields.”

“As for the rest of the year and into early 2024, Sarff foresees continued demand for farmland.

“I think if commodity prices stay where the bin which nobody knows for sure, but it sounds like we're probably going to see strong commodity prices through the end of the year and into 24. I think we'll continue to see strong demand for farmland.”

Once again Eric Sarff, President of Murray Wise and Associates, a national farm brokerage and management company.