Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Prime Iowa Farm Land Selling

We have the nature conservancy here, what a cluster f~ck of governmental proportions, they buy farm land, and immediately take it off the tax rolls so the rest of us have to make those losses up, then its the destruction of all of the buildings, including 100 year old barns that are homes to thousands of bats, it the scorched earth method of land ownership, all pond dikes are breached, the fish, frogs and turtles are left to die and rot and the lands are left to regenerate what ever grows there. Its quite repulsive to anyone who understands proper land usage.

Whatcha get for that, about 90 acres?

Farm land anywhere will go for what it's worth for it's growing potential. That is until some large operations have too much money and need a safe place to hide it. That screws it up for us younger independent guys trying to grow.
Different area and different crops, but our farm land goes for $30,000-$38,000 an acre. This is land that designated by our county for AG only. This keeps developers out of the picture.
It's very painful to grow an operation!

Excellent assessment.

I don’t see how growing anything other than maybe cocaine could debt service $38k an acre. That’s just insane

Back from the auction. It sold as two 80's. The west brought $10,600, the east side $9,600.

I bid both up to $8,700. It hurts when your banker beats on you with his shoes!

You folks can put your checkbooks away now!

Depending on where it's at in Iowa , that price is down quite a bit from 2013,through 2015. Good farm land where I live, and it's all good farmland in our area , will go for around $10,000 an acre here now,. Some a little under and some a little higher. At it's peak it was at $14,000 an acre and no shortage of interest. All bought as farm land .
The local banks will finance about 50% The older guys that own outright a lot of ground just look at is as averaging it out with the rest of their ground and gives their kids more land to farm after they are gone. Lot's of this land was bought for $300 to $400 an acre back in the 60's and 70's

Bp

Holy smokes, I'm looking at 100 acres across the road, and thinking the 6K per acre they want is insane.... Two cuttings of hay aren't going to cover that mortgage!

At those California prices, you'd almost have to go full year round production in a greenhouse for something like table tomatoes -- you can do almost 250K lbs of tomatoes per acre per year...... Sounds like a lot of work, and only between 500K and 1MM per acre additional investment in greenhouses.

This farming thing is getting expensive!

Richard, when you wake up tomorrow, I think that you will give a sigh of relief. Best, John

The thing about farming today is that it is extremely hard to say what is and what isn't the answer to long term, not short term, success. Here in my part of the world, tobacco has always been the big cash crop, the one that paid for most everything that grain and livestock could not. It's still pretty much that way. If you're a tobacco grower and have some good contracts, you're making money, and can afford to some degree the volatile situation in the grain market. If you're strictly a grain farmer, you damn well better be a good businessman, or else you're apt to go under. The livestock market has been flat the past few years as well, and most cattle operations are break even propositions, unless they're in a niche market.

Then there is USDA. Most farmers I know will say that they wish the government would get out of farming, but when there is a disaster of sorts, and USDA is handing out money, they're the first in line with their hand held out. I've dealt with them for over 40 years, and consider them a necessary evil. They are not going to get their hands out of agriculture, because a good cheap supply of food is what they are after.....not just for the free food market either, but for the consumer that pays for their food out of their paycheck.

I can't speak for farmers in any other part of the country, but here in my part of Kentucky if you take the Mennonite equation out of it, it is the farmers with the most equity who usually buy land, not some beginning farmer. Those days are pretty much gone, as land prices are just too high, and it's not just land, it's equipment and the input costs as well. It would be extremely hard for some young guy to start out without having someone to help him.

Almonds @ $3.00 a pound @ 2500-3200 pounds per acre.
25-30 year turnover on orchards. About $7500-$10,000 per acre to re-develop. (Extrapolated over 28 yrs)
Not including yearly operation costs.

one or two good marijuana plants per acre will bring in a bit more than an acre of pulpwood on good soil.

but, back to the subject at hand: lot's of the price is now associated with land being a real asset while money is steadily depreciating, imho.

I don’t think some of you people don’t realize the expense involved with crops. Gross sales don’t mean anything. But on the other hand my wife and I just got a check from the government on the farm. It’s was an awesome 152.00 . Yes I did cash it. Lol ed k

Only two things are for sure:
Nothing's cheap and nothing's guaranteed.

We can only get one crop a year. You have to get down to about the Mason Dixon line or a little further south to get 2 crops a year.

Also in the early 1980's I seen guys go under owing $2500 an acre for ground. Of course, they also went into debt for new tractors and equipment borrowing against that ground and their crop. We also had a Jimmy Carter embargo that was not totally resolved by the early 1980's and that hurt too. I understand there are an increasing number of farm bankruptcy's going on right now as well. It's 1982 all over again.

kwg

That is true, although Corn was 2.00 a bushel and made about 140 bu/acre , but the real killer was 20% + interest rates for those guys who had land and equipment financed.

Jimmy Carter was the best learning experience this country ever had, what a f~cking idiot he is !

Generally speaking is land covered with big trees, mostly oaks and other hardwoods, worth more or less than farmland?

The farther.', north you go, the slower growing the trees are, so the density is greatly and so is the wood value, but few owners or buyers care any more, check out the boat builders on Chautauqua lake in the 50's. The best furniture, Pianos and boats were made from the hardwood grown here.

Land in Grundy Co, Iowa was valued at $10,000/acre in 2017. I believe totaled at 158 tillable acres. I know, I sold some of it.