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Participants at Iowa State University's 78th annual Soil Management and Land Valuation Conference predicted Wednesday that the average value of Iowa's farmland will hit nearly $3,000 an acre by November. Iowa State University's longest running annual conference was attended by nearly 300 people this year, mainly employees of farm management companies, land appraisers and bankers, people who know the rural land market. Of those, 197 submitted their best guess at what the state's farmland will be worth when ISU does its own survey. Their average prediction was $2,933 an acre. "The past several years they've been very close, particularly for the six-month estimate. It's essentially from May to November," said Mike Duffy, the ISU economist who conducts the land price survey and who has organized the land valuation conference for 20 years.
A year ago, conference participants projected an average value for Iowa farmland at $2,669 per acre, which was off by only 1.5% from Duffy's survey result of an average value of $2,629 an acre. Conference participants also see the increase in land values slowing a bit. Last year's average value was 15.6% higher than in 2003. They don't see land price appreciation slowing at the same rate in the state's four quadrants, however. "The southeast quadrant seems to be the strongest," Duffy said. Those who work in the farmland market expect a 13.8% increase in values there, to an average of $3,175 an acre. Conference participants project the slowest growth, 7.4%, in southwest Iowa. If that projection holds up, land values there would average $2,547 by November of this year. |
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