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.
“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.