Land prices down in Iowa

May 20, 2016

Other Midwestern states also facing falling land prices

By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, farmland values in Iowa and other Midwestern states are down.

“Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Michigan saw year-over-year declines of five per cent, two per cent, five per cent and seven per cent, respectively,” the bank said in its latest newsletter.

David Oppedahl, senior business economist with the Chicago Fed, said that of nearly 200 agricultural bankers surveyed, most think land values to drop in the second quarter.

Investing

“These patterns reflected the challenging circumstances facing farmers, as they attempt to weather a downturn in agricultural priced by shoring up their cash flows and holding back on capital spending,” he wrote in the newsletter.

Justin Dammann, a corn and soybean farmer from Essex, Iowa, told the Des Moines Register that land prices haven’t dropped as much as corn prices.

“There is still a lot of money that is drifting into agriculture and so a lot of that money has kept this land pretty high,” he told the Iowa newspaper.

He said land prices are “softer”, but there’s still demand for land investment.

In March 2014, farmland in Iowa was selling for $8,286 per acre, compared to $7,372 per acre in March 2015.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.