View Blogs

Be the first person to recommend this.
Big Short Investor is on a Rural Real Estate Buying Spree When investors like Kyle Bass talk, investors listen. Bass, whose story was immortalized in Michael Lewis's book "The Big Short," first predicted then profited from the 2008 financial crash. With that in mind, real estate investors everywhere should pay attention to his most current advice, which is to follow migration trends and buy real estate in those areas. Bass is buying large tracts of rural land in Texas, Florida and Tennessee. Read the Full Story US Agriculture Industry Gears Up for 'Drone-Swarm' Farming A new exemption for drone piloting from the Federal Aviation Administration ...
0 comments
Be the first person to recommend this.
Signs of Weakening Farmland Values Several indicators point to weakening farmland values. Jim Rothermich, ARA, with Iowa Appraisal tells Brownfield he tracks every land auction in the state and says there were at least nine no-sales in February. “That is a drastic increase. A year ago, February 2023, we had two. So that’s how big a difference there is right now.” A no-sale occurs when the property isn’t sold because a reserve price has not been met. Read the Full Story Common Offer to Lease Farmland for Solar Panels: $1,000 an Acre More than half of large U.S. farmers say they have been offered at least $1,000 an acre during discussions ...
0 comments
Be the first person to recommend this.
Farm Family Selling Land and Operations for $2 Billion Fresno’s Assemi family, one of the region’s largest in the ag business, is looking to divest from its farming operations, seeking a buyer for tens of thousands of acres of farmland, as well as Touchstone Pistachio Company, a major nut processor it owns. The move comes as Farid Assemi – who has headed up the family’s farming operations – has faced declining health over the past few years and an intense intra-family legal battle over control of the family’s farming enterprise. Sources with knowledge said the value of the combined entities and their assets sits at roughly $2 billion. Read the Full ...
0 comments
Be the first person to recommend this.
How Interest Rates Could Impact Farmland Values in 2024 Lately, the news has been full of talk about interest rates. The Federal Reserve’s recent decision to hold interest rates steady at 5.25% to 5.5% comes as a beacon of stability. It signals that perhaps we are approaching the corner on inflation. But now that we’re sitting on high interest rates, what does that mean for the farmland market? Since the onset of rate hikes in March 2022, we’ve seen the landscape of borrowing and investing undergo significant shifts, with the Fed’s actions rippling across various sectors, including agriculture. According to Ty Kreitman of the Federal Reserve Bank of ...
0 comments
Be the first person to recommend this.
Top 20 Landowners in America, According to a New Report Endless miles of vast land stretch as far as the eye can see, but only a few families own much of it. Almost half of all American farmland is owned by people who don't actually farm themselves. Many of these wealthy families make their fortunes in the lumber and forest industry, with millions of acres in timberland throughout the Pacific Northwest. The largest landowners run cattle operations and farms throughout the Great Plains and the West. Some ranches include land leased from the state or government for cattle grazing, while others offer oil and gas revenue. Traditionally, family members hold ...
0 comments
Be the first person to recommend this.
Zuckerberg Gets Into the Cattle Game on Hawaii Ranch In 2019, Facebook banned livestock sales between private individuals. It also began tightening down the hatches, so to speak, banning animal parts, pelts, and skin sales, including furs. That same year, PETA bought shares in Facebook hoping to have more of a say in the filtering process on Facebook. But now, Facebook’s co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced that he’s entering the farming and ranching industry. He made the announcement on the social media platform this week that he has begun raising cattle at his Ko’olau Ranch on Kauai. The ranch has been called a “top-secret compound” by some. ...
0 comments
Be the first person to recommend this.
Foreign-Owned U.S. Farmland Acres Rose More Than 8% in 2022 The number of U.S. farm acres owned by foreign entities grew more than 8% in 2022, though the 43.4 million acres of foreign-owned forest and farm land is just 3.4% of the country's agricultural land, said a government report on Friday. The issue of who owns American farmland, and whether foreign ownership of farmland presents a national security risk, has been hotly discussed in Washington, and some members of Congress have proposed limits on foreign farmland ownership. Foreign entities bought 3.4 million acres of U.S. farmland in 2022, with the biggest increases in Colorado, Alabama and Michigan, ...
0 comments
Be the first person to recommend this.
AI Brings Transparency to Farmland Values Sometimes the answer to a question is right in front of you, but you can’t see it. Like where is the box of tissues in the storage closet? My husband insists we are out of tissues. I insist there is a box in there, he just needs to keep looking. We bicker about it some more, shouting from opposite sides of the house, until I finally join him at the closet and find it myself…in seconds. Artificial intelligence (AI) is on its way to helping humans efficiently sort through the “storage closet” of farmland data to answer complex questions, such as how much a field is worth and who is likely to buy it. Yet, some say ...
0 comments
Be the first person to recommend this.
Who’s Buying Nebraska? Corporations, Investors Grabbing Giant Chunks of Nebraska Farmland There’s never a Black Friday discount when a piece of Nebraska farmland hits the market in 2023, be it a fertile field in the Platte River Valley or a vast swath of Sandhills pastureland. The market’s hot. And corporate farms, both in-state and out, are dipping into their deep pockets to claim the increasingly pricey agricultural land they desire. The nine buyers who spent the most money on Nebraska farmland in the past five years are all corporate farming operations, real estate developers or investment firms, an analysis by the Flatwater Free Press found. ...
0 comments
Be the first person to recommend this.
Silicon Valley Billionaires Bully Farmers & Landowners, Sue Over Inflated Land Prices A Silicon Valley group backed by billionaires said it’s acquired all the land it needs to build a utopian city in northern California, after quietly buying more properties in the past month. Flannery Associates, the company behind the California Forever project, spent more than $800 million scooping up land for the project, a buying spree done extremely discreetly over several years which was first revealed in late August by the media. The project has since faced criticism from local officials and residents who fear the impact of their plans on the environment, local ...
0 comments
Be the first person to recommend this.
Arkansas Orders Syngenta Land Sale Over Chinese Ties Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin has ordered Syngenta-owned Northrup King Seed Co. to sell 160 acres of land in the state because of their Chinese roots. Arkansas is giving Syngenta two years to sell its acreage in the northeastern part of the state, stating national security as the primary reason. According to Reuters, the global seed company is unsurprisingly discontent over the order. “This is about where your loyalties lie,” Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at a news conference. Syngenta called the decision a “shortsighted action” that will hurt Arkansas farmers. ...
0 comments
Be the first person to recommend this.
Patrick Swayze’s Former Los Angeles Ranch Hits the Market at $4.5 million The year after he was launched into silver screen notoriety in the notable 1983 films “The Outsiders” and “Uncommon Valor,” but still several years before he shimmied and dipped his way to leading man superstardom in “Dirty Dancing,” late actor Patrick Swayze acquired an equestrian ranch on the outskirts of Los Angeles that he named Rancho Bizarro. Swayze, a licensed pilot who died of pancreatic cancer at 57 years old in 2009, raised Arabian horses on the property. Newly listed for $4.5 million, the 4.5-acre spread in Sylmar is tucked into the rolling foothills that mark the northern ...
0 comments
Be the first person to recommend this.
SOLD! 115 Acres of Missouri Farmland Just Sold For $34,800 Per Acre, Smashing the Previous Record Move over Iowa, there’s a new record farmland sale on the books. A piece of Missouri farmland underwent rapid-fire bidding, which racked the final price tag up to $34,800 per acre. The recent sale now beats out the previous record of $30,000 per acre in Iowa. According to the bill of sale from Dyer and Fenner Auctioneers, the record sale happened last Thursday in Saline County, Mo. Two farmers got in a bidding war, and in just 15 minutes the 115 acres sold for $34,800 an acre, setting the new record. The buyer wasn’t an investor. The winning bid came from ...
0 comments
Be the first person to recommend this.
Summit Carbon Solutions Denied Permit for Carbon Dioxide Pipeline South Dakota's Public Utilities Commission on Monday denied a permit application from Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions to build 495 miles of pipeline through the state to transport captured carbon dioxide from ethanol plants to an underground storage site. The three-member commission voted unanimously to deny the company's application on what was set to be the first day of three weeks of evidentiary hearings on the project. Summit said in a statement that it respects the commission's decision and plans to refine and refile its application. On Friday, the PUC's staff recommended in a ...
0 comments
Be the first person to recommend this.
Proposed Bill Would Increase Exemption for Estate Taxes Congressman Jimmy Panetta of California has reintroduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives with the aim of increasing the 2032A special-use valuation cap for qualified family farms. The intent of the increase is to reduce the number of family farms having to sell farm-related assets to satisfy an estate tax debt. If passed, the higher exemption will have a significant positive impact for farm families in taxable estate brackets. 2032A is a helpful tax valuation for farm families that reduces the value of some farm real property. Rather than having to value farm real property at market ...
0 comments
Be the first person to recommend this.
Why Big Finance Is Betting on Farmland On the wind-swept plains of the heartland, an agricultural revolution is quietly underway. This one’s not led by advances in machinery or biotech, but rather by the inconspicuous behemoths of financial institutions: the institutional investor. Who are these institutional investors? Everyday individual investors make up the entities buying farmland, bringing together funds from people of various professions and backgrounds. Individual investors are people just like you and me: teachers, health-care workers, civil servants contributing to pension funds, or affluent individuals or families engaged with mutual funds or ...
0 comments
Be the first person to recommend this.
The ASFMRA Land Report on RFD-TV The ASFMRA has partnered with RFD-TV to bring you the ASFMRA Land Report, a weekly segment where the nation's top rural property professionals share timely updates on regional agricultural issues and market developments, with special attention paid to our most important resource: American farmland. Tune in to the leading ag and rural news network each Wednesday at 12:30 PM CT to gain insights from accredited land experts and learn the stories behind the numbers! Episodes to date: Rebecca Stone, ARA – July 26 Skye Root, AFM, AAC – July 19 Doug Hodge, ARA – July 12 Rick Hiatt, AFM, ARA – July 5 Tony ...
0 comments
Be the first person to recommend this.
New Law Reduced South Dakota Farmland Valuations by $120.5 Million A South Dakota law that empowers counties to re-designate swaths of land from crop-land to non-crop land, aided in reducing farmland valuations by a total of $120.5 million. On Tuesday, lawmakers pressed the State Department of Revenue on whether the implementation of this law is working the way it was intended. The law, SDCL 10-6-130, permits South Dakota counties to assess the soil classifications of their land, and determine whether land with Class IV soils, or soils that have severe limitations that restrict crop growth, should be deemed cropland or non-crop land, potentially saving ...
0 comments
Be the first person to recommend this.
Who Owns Iowa Farmland? Fewer than half the people at a recent farm auction in Clinton County were actual bidders. The rest came for the cookies, conversation and to see who would walk away with 150 acres of Iowa dirt. Would it be the men in suits sitting in folding chairs by the wall? What about the old-timer in overalls? Or would an online buyer swoop in with the highest bid? Read the Full Story Apple Co-founder to Sell Huge Carmel Valley Ranch for $35 Million A legendary Silicon Valley tech leader who bought a vast ranch in Carmel Valley 40 years ago is selling the property to a conservation group to become a new public preserve and cultural ...
0 comments
Be the first person to recommend this.
Income Surges From Alternative Farmland Leases Every year presents a unique blend of challenges and rewards for farming. Few things have as much impact on a farming operation as land rent. In Illinois, 2022 proved to be exceptional for farmers and, subsequently, landowners, as reported in the recent survey by the Illinois Society of Professional Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers. One key finding was the significant surge in average income for landowners from alternative leases compared to the previous year. These numbers speak volumes about the prosperity that buoyed the farming community. Read the Full Story Dallenbach Racing Family Sells Iconic ...
0 comments