Iowa cropland values rose 0.6% over the past six months, according to the Iowa Realtors Land Institute's twice-yearly survey, and with the gain in the previous survey the state average is up about 1.9% on an annual basis.

"The point of our survey isn't to establish a price but to find the trend," said Matt Vegter of Hertz Real Estate Services in Nevada, Iowa, who runs the survey with his colleague Jameson Anders. With values steady to higher in seven of the nine crop reporting districts, he described a sideways market trying to trend up. Six districts rose, one was flat and two, North Central and Northwest, slipped. East Central gained most, 2.5%, and North Central fell most, 1.3%; over the year North Central is down 1.8%, while East Central is up 4.5% and the Northeast 4.4%.

Vegter said optimism has come from the rise in crop prices over the past 60 days, tempered by higher fuel and fertiliser costs and higher interest rates. "The income from these higher prices is still in the fields. It hasn't been harvested," he said, adding that a good volume of farms is coming to market over the next six months.

Pasture values rose 1.9% in six months, after a 2.6% gain in the March survey, with the cattle market keeping demand from cattle producers strong; East Central led with 5.2% and the Southwest was the only district to fall, by 0.3%. Timber and recreational land rose 2.1%, led again by East Central at 6%.

The survey's history shows tillable land rising 44.3% from 1 September 2020 to 1 March 2023, then falling 10.5% from 1 September 2023 to 1 September 2025, before this return to an annual gain. "Buyers are still very active," Anders said. "They are just a little more selective in the farms they are willing to pursue." Good farms, he said, are still drawing healthy bids. The report was written by Mike Walsten.

Photo: inkknife_2000 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Source: Pro Farmer