Ethanol Is Feeding Hot Market for Farmland
By MONICA DAVEY
New York Times
DEKALB, Ill. — While much of the nation worries about a slumping real estate market, people in Midwestern farm country are experiencing exactly the opposite. Take, for instance, the farm here — nearly 80 acres of corn and soybeans off a gravel road in a universe of corn and soybeans — that sold for $10,000 an acre at auction this spring, a price that astonished even the auctioneer.
“If they had seen that day, they would have never believed it,” Penny Layman said of her sister and brother-in-law, who paid $32,000 for the entire spread in 1962 and whose deaths led to the sale.
Skyrocketing farmland prices, particularly in states like Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, giddy with the promise of corn-based ethanol, are stirring new optimism among established farmers. But for younger farmers, already rare in this graying profession, and for small farmers with dreams of expanding and grabbing a piece of the ethanol craze, the news is oddly grim. The higher prices feel out of reach.
“It’s extremely frustrating,” said Paul Burrs, who farms about 400 acres near Dixon, Ill., and says he regularly bids on new farmland in the hopes of renting it. Mostly, he said, he loses out to higher bidders. “I crunch the numbers and go as high as I can. But then that’s it. There’s nothing more I can do.”
Mr. Burrs, who is 28, had a grandfather and a stepgrandfather who farmed. “So I guess it’s in my blood,” he said, “that feeling that you’ve got to do this, you were meant to do this.”
(Continued here.)
New York Times
DEKALB, Ill. — While much of the nation worries about a slumping real estate market, people in Midwestern farm country are experiencing exactly the opposite. Take, for instance, the farm here — nearly 80 acres of corn and soybeans off a gravel road in a universe of corn and soybeans — that sold for $10,000 an acre at auction this spring, a price that astonished even the auctioneer.
“If they had seen that day, they would have never believed it,” Penny Layman said of her sister and brother-in-law, who paid $32,000 for the entire spread in 1962 and whose deaths led to the sale.
Skyrocketing farmland prices, particularly in states like Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, giddy with the promise of corn-based ethanol, are stirring new optimism among established farmers. But for younger farmers, already rare in this graying profession, and for small farmers with dreams of expanding and grabbing a piece of the ethanol craze, the news is oddly grim. The higher prices feel out of reach.
“It’s extremely frustrating,” said Paul Burrs, who farms about 400 acres near Dixon, Ill., and says he regularly bids on new farmland in the hopes of renting it. Mostly, he said, he loses out to higher bidders. “I crunch the numbers and go as high as I can. But then that’s it. There’s nothing more I can do.”
Mr. Burrs, who is 28, had a grandfather and a stepgrandfather who farmed. “So I guess it’s in my blood,” he said, “that feeling that you’ve got to do this, you were meant to do this.”
(Continued here.)
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