Agricultural land in the United States has kept its value even as farm finances have tightened, according to a 27 August update by Ty Kreitman, associate economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, reported by Farm Progress in its monthly Kansas land-sales column.

Kreitman, a contributor to the Kansas City Fed's Center for Agriculture and the Economy, wrote that land values have risen faster than cash rents, which lowers the return a landowner earns from renting, but the long-term appreciation of farmland has stayed steady. The capitalisation rate on non-irrigated cropland slipped just below the 10-year moving average yield on 10-year US Treasury bonds in the second quarter of 2026; the 10-year moving average of annual land appreciation, however, remained more than 1.25 percentage points above it. Over the past decade average land appreciation has beaten average inflation-adjusted 10-year bond yields by about 3.5 percentage points.

Farmers remain the primary buyers in most major agricultural regions, Kreitman said, because the long-term prospects look attractive when weighed against inflation and alternative investments.

In Kansas, auction reports stayed sporadic through August, with real estate firms expecting activity to pick up after harvest. On 1 September about 1,059 acres of cropland and pasture south of Luray in Russell County sold in five tracts: grassland at $2,500 and $2,450 an acre, and dryland at $2,150, $3,050 and $1,900 an acre, for the Walter H Homewood Trust through BigIron Realty.

In Saline County, a 132-acre tract of dryland wheat stubble with mineral rights west of Solomon sold on 11 August for $3,304 an acre. In Butler County, the 243-acre former Girl Scouts Camp Four Winds near Leon, with a 14.5-acre lake, timber and a creek, sold on 9 July for $5,761.32 an acre through Gene Francis & Associates.

Source: Farm Progress