February 17, 2015
Overall the U.S. farmland market has slowed in 2014, as values of non-irrigated land in the Southern Plains declined by 0.1%, and values of ‘good’ cropland in the Midwest fell for the first time since 1986. However, under the surface, a dual market is emerging made up of a high ranchland market supported by a strong livestock market, and a declining cropland market as a result of poor corn and soybean prices.
This division played out most apparently in the Southern Plains where cropland prices in Nebraska fell by more than 3%, while holding even in Kansas and Missouri, and ranchland values in the region were up 10.5% in the fourth quarter of 2014, compared to the same quarter a year before, driven by healthy prices for both feeder cattle and fed cattle.
In the U.S. Midwest, land values seem to have been supported somewhat from livestock and dairy operations according to the Federal Reserve Chicago Bank. In the major dairy state of Wisconsin, farmland prices increased 2% over the course of 2014 – in direct contrast with a 7% decline in values for cropland in Iowa, the country’s leading soybean and corn producing state.
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