Some might have expected the housing slowdown in Minnesota to negatively affect farmland values by curbing speculative land buying and development. But strong commodity prices are showing that corn and soybeans are mightier than housing in terms of cash crops for state farmers.
According to the Minnesota field office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service, farmland values in the state went up by close to 15 percent last year, continuing a hot streak of higher farmland values, with an average acre increasing by 60 percent since 2002 and by 33 percent since 2004. That trend is likely to continue in 2007, as prices for corn, soybeans, milk, wheat, eggs, cattle and other commodities were significantly higher during the summer months of this year compared with last.
—Ronald A. Wirtz
