News

Farmland prices remain strong

Prices and demand for farmland remained strong in the first six months of 2014 in the four-state territory of Farm Credit Services of America (FCSAmerica).  It includes Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming.

FCSAmerica’s semi-annual appraisal of farmland values shows a stabilization of prices in Iowa, where the market showed signs of softening in the last half of 2013.  And land values continued to increase in the other three states, with Nebraska up one-point-five percent and South Dakota up nearly six percent.

Meanwhile, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) report on the Nebraska farm real estate market indicates that average farmland values were up about nine percent for the 12-month period ending on February 1st of this year.   One of the report’s authors, UNL Extension Educator Jim Jansen, says the strongest percentage increases were in hay land and grazing land.

“As an example, for the grazing land, non-tillable—the land class that includes pasture and rangeland—we’d seen increases anywhere from maybe a low of about ten percent all the way up to 40 percent,” Jansen says.

Overall, grazing land increased 24 percent with hay land up 26 percent.  Jansen says those increases are a reflection of the increasingly bullish outlook for cattle prices.

The report showed pivot irrigated cropland in Nebraska increased six percent in value over the same period.