Iowa farmland values shoot up 20 percent in 6 months

Iowa Farmer Today ^ | Tuesday, March 22, 2011 4:08 PM CDT | By Gene Lucht

[Caipirabob]

A run on farmland? Does not surprise - does it?

Sounds like people are preparing for the storm.

[WKUHilltopper]

From what I hear from my friends in Iowa—the Chinese are buying the crap out of the farm land.

[familyop]

Per acre prices? Whoa!

[musicman]

[Last Dakotan]

Q:How come the bills on farmer's baseball caps are always bent in a curve?

A:From looking in mailboxes all day for government checks.

[montag813]

Because pf Ethanol distortion, or because of food?

[EternalVigilance]

Because pf Ethanol distortion, or because of food?

Because they ain't makin' no more of it.

[ImpBill]

If anyone followed our last foray into double digit inflationary times, farmland all over the country, especially the Midwest skyrocketed. Jimmah Carter's misery index is going to make this next period of inflation look like a Sunday School picnic. And then the bottom rocked many farmers into loosing their land.

Beware! This is not the greatest of news. Far from it!

[tiki]

Yep, because they were paying 20% interest for their money too.

[ImpBill]

Bingo!

[wheresmyusa]

The leftist useful idiots want the land in that area to be too expensive to purchase for homesteading types, and the ones who do get it will be “nudged” into allowing it to lay fallow. You know, to save the planet from CO2. You may find this Sierra Club(gag).pdf interesting.

Cliffs Notes breakdown;

Ethanol: Need more.(?)

Farming: Bad.

Livestock: Bad.

Loss of Conservation Reserve Land: Bad.

Agribusiness in general: Bad.

Food with any Corn-based ingredients: Bad.

Reduced use of Corn by Livestock producers: Friggin Awesome.

Poor people affected by surging food costs: Eff em!

Solution to everything: Sustainable Development

www.sierraclub.org/energy/downloads/IowaBiofuelsReport.pdf

[SteveH]

commodities for anti-inflationary hedge.

chinese- much cash-on-hand, not stupid.

[DeaconBenjamin]

chinese- much cash-on-hand, not stupid.

Getting value for dollars while they still can.

[HereInTheHeartland]

“Because they ain't makin’ no more of it. “

I remember hearing that line a lot. In the 1980’s right before the crash.
It will happen again unfortunately. I hate to see Iowa getting set up to go through this again.
The 80’s caused a lot of pain here.

[EternalVigilance]

Yeah, I know. I lived it.

[redgolum]

Dad dodged that bullet in the 80’s, but not by much. Now my cousin is setting himself up for a big fall. Sad thing is my Grandpa always told us to be wary, and my cousin forgot that.

[HereInTheHeartland]

I have thought about putting together a archive of all the newsletters, magazine articles, etc from before the 80’s crash.
I was at Iowa State when things started falling apart as an ag student.
I know many good people who were hurt badly from what happened.
It feels like it will all happen again; but no one sees it.

I remember specifically hearing all the reasons back then why land prices would stay high. Some were: “they are not making any more of it”, “farmland is disappearing because of urbanization”, “have to feed the world”, a subset of that “China”, “investors taking their money out of equities markets and into “real assets””.

There were more but can't recall them.

[redgolum]

Last year, and my cousin leveraged a few 100K in farm land, I reminded him of that. He just said that things were different now and that he had to grow to survive.

Honestly I hope he guessed right, but my uncle told me that they are one bad harvest from losing most of it.

[Conservativegreatgrandma]

I’m in Iowa and have not heard that.