This year appears to be shaping up differently, compared with recent years. Three differences in 2025 include:
1. Plentiful rainfall. Most of Iowa (and the Midwest) has enjoyed plentiful rain throughout the growing season — in some areas, too much rain. This has broken a streak of three-plus consecutive years when we lacked consistent rain.
2. No grain market rally. Thanks to generous moisture and little crop stress, we never really saw a summer grain market rally. Commodity prices have generally trended lower for six months — painfully so — to below-breakeven levels.
When is the last time we saw grain market highs in February? Since 1970, the answer is once for corn and never for soybeans.
3. Stable land market. While the full jury is still out, it seems we have a stable land market despite a second consecutive year of weak row-crop profitability. How can this be?
There are several things in play. I’ve written previously about the lack of land for sale, which has supported land prices.
Yes, overall demand for land is down, given the weaker economic conditions, but the supply of land for purchase has been down even more. Thus, it seems there has still been enough demand to maintain land price stability.
Second, we enjoyed an early-year financial boost, both from the grain markets and from the government. A large volume of stored 2024 grain was sold in early 2025 at profitable levels, which bailed out many who had stored unpriced grain last fall.
And when that was combined with the spring-season Emergency Commodity Assistance Program payments, there was still cash in the countryside to allow consideration of a land purchase. Sure, buyers have been more hesitant to deploy valuable working capital, but there are still buyers.
Finally, we are now staring at what many expect to be a record corn crop. The expectation for big bushels this fall — combined with the sector’s overall financial strength built during the good times — makes land purchases still possible.
I need to be clear here: The land market is flat and is not in a current uptrend. But in the past, back-to-back years of weak commodity prices would have resulted in widespread weakness. This year appears to be different.
O’Brien County. Southwest of Hartley, +/- 152 acres recently sold at public auction for $14,000 per acre. The farm consisted of +/- 143 tillable acres with a Corn Suitability Rating index of 93.1, and equaled $160 per CSR2 point on the tillable acres.
Mitchell County. North of Nora Springs, +/- 75 acres recently sold for $16,360 per acre. The farm consisted of +/- 75 tillable acres with a CSR2 of 91.6, and equaled $179 per CSR2 point on the tillable acres.
Bremer County. North of Plainfield, +/- 169 acres recently sold for $5,918 per acre. The mix-use farm consisted of +/- 83 tillable acres, of which +/- 44 acres were cropped…
Read More: Plentiful rain, no market rally, yet land prices hold steady in Midwest
