Last year a piece Iowa farmland for sale – near Orange City – sold for 13,950$ / acre. At the time (just last year mind you) those Iowa farmland prices were all many people could talk about for some time. It was an amazing amount of money! It was a record price for any Iowa farms for sale and many couldn’t see that figure being surpassed for many years.

But here we are in 2011, just one year later, and another “buzz” generating sale has just taken place in the great state of Iowa. A one hundred twenty (120) acre farmstead near Sioux Center just sold for a whopping 16,750$ / acre. Another new Iowa record for farmland prices!

Just 10 years ago Iowa farmland prices averaged 1,926$ / Acre.

Iowa farmland values soured 34% just in the period from Sept 2010 to Sept 2011! The fact that corn prices have doubled as well as soybean prices shooting up obviously are a major factor in the increased valuation of Iowa farmland.

Although popular opinion says that Iowa farmers are in a very strong financial position overall – one can’t help but be a little aprehensive at this frantic pace of increasing farmland prices. Afterall, there have been periods in history (1919-1920 and 1972-1974) when land prices saw huge booms and what followed were 2 very severe farm depressions.

But hopefully the current practice of banks requiring as much as 50% down before any monies are loaned will help offset the danger of any severe crises such as we saw in those earlier periods.