Managing for Profit

Land value pressure from more than just commodity slow-down

It’s often said that lower commodity prices are the primary cause for land prices receding.  University of Illinois farmland economics professor Bruce Sherrick tells Brownfield that many are under the impression that land assets will fall correspondingly to commodity prices, but he says there’s much more going on.  The land market itself is thin; there is not a lot of land that changes hands.  And what is currently going on is different from other periods of time during which land prices dropped.  The most notable difference and the most often compared is between the current land value drop and the one that precipitated the 1980s farm crisis.

AUDIO: Bruce Sherrick (3 min. MP3)