US Farmland Value Trends

Lorrie Boyer

Reporter

In the last 15 years, American agriculture has experienced two strong farm income periods which led to ag land price increases. Ag Economic Insights Farmland Analyst, Randy Dickhut

“First one was kicked off in 2005 to seven with the expansion of ethanol production and the soybean demand from China. So that expanded the need for those acres around the world, and grain prices went up. So that farm incomes went up, it propelled land prices up then and then. So farm incomes came back down. Land prices softened some.”

This was followed, Dickhut says, by a period from 2020, to 2022, of stronger farm incomes with good commodity livestock and cattle prices, causing land prices to take off once again.

Now we're starting to see lower commodity prices, higher inflation that's now backing off to higher interest rates. So there's a lot of question about the land market, land prices. You know, there's some softening. Will it soften some more or not? Time will tell. But there's not a lot of supply for sale. It's not overly large, and there's good enough demand, yeah,

Once again, Randy Dickhut, Ag, Economic Insights, farmland analyst.