Iowa Farmland Prices Make Small Rise

This week, Iowa State University released its annual land value survey, which found a slight increase in farmland values in Iowa.

The change in land prices varied across the state, with the regions with increases exceeding those will smart declines. 

The survey found that 55 percent of land purchases were from estate sales, and another 22 percent came from retired farmers. 

Thomas (shut-ter) Schutter of Farmers National Company recently appeared on the MtoM podcast discussing current parties involved in land sales.

Thomas Schutter,  Farmers National Company:  “Our typical stereotype, it's, it's it's the folks with legacy assets with some type of a life event in the background where they're typically not trying to offload these, these assets, rather, forced to in a lot of cases based on their current, situation, could be an estate, could be, some type of death in the family. It could be all sorts of things, but it's really based on their goals individually and not necessarily a broader, market dynamic. Now that you do have a smaller facet of the market that's focused on returns, and over time they're going to gravitate towards those higher returning assets and getting out of farmland into some, some type of, stock or some other vehicle.”

Two thirds of 2025 Iowa land purchases were made by active farmers, with investors completing another 22 percent of purchases.

New farmers were involved in only 4 percent of land transactions in the state.

Survey respondents pointed towards strong yields, large cash reserves and high credit availability as the primary support for land prices.

Schutter adds market forces are in play more when the quality of the land is up for sale.

Thomas Schutter: “We've talked about this equilibrium point coming where we've seen a gluttony of buyers for a long time and not as many sellers. And we're starting to reach that point where maybe there's some farms out there that aren't getting sold at auction for what the sellers would like. And so that really tells me that there's a lot less buyers out there, especially for those lower quality or average farms.”

The survey estimates that 85 percent of farmland in Iowa is owned debt free.

The Iowa State survey mimics results of other land value surveys by the USDA and Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. 

Half of survey respondents believe land values will remain flat or decrease in 2026 due to low commodity prices and high interest rates. 81 percent of experts believe land values will rise 10-20 percent by 2030. 

Iowa State University has been compiling its survey of farmland values since 1941. The 2025 survey used 435 county-level estimates from 316 professionals that work in agriculture. 

For Market to Market, I’m Peter Tubbs