Who is buying farmland these days?

Farmers are still the dominate buyers of farmland. I know several families that sold their farms for development and did a 1031 tax exchange into other real estate. They had many opportunities to reinvest their sale proceeds in industrial, commercial/retail investments, stock or bonds. They choose farmland because they understood it. They had experience. Then we have the dramatic economic downturn in the U.S. economy, but farmland continued to increase in value for many reasons. Now these same farm families are selling the farmland that has nearly doubled in value to purchase farms closer to development. The development parcels have decreased in value by as much as 75%, back to basic farmland prices.

Other farmland buyers are individual investors, hedge funds, retirement funds, and foreign investors.

• Relatively little U.S. farmland is foreign owned
• Comparison of Farm Profiles in Midwest States
• Agricultural land ownership has remained stable

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