From The Gazette, Cedar Rapids Iowa, June 15:
Fewer than half the people at a recent farm auction in Clinton County were actual bidders. The rest came for the cookies, conversation and to see who would walk away with 150 acres of Iowa dirt.
Would it be the men in suits sitting in folding chairs by the wall?
What about the old-timer in overalls?
Or would an online buyer swoop in with the highest bid?
“Folks, you don’t want to be driving past the farm and saying ‘I wish I would have bought it’ later down the road,” said Jesse Meyer, an auctioneer for the Peoples Company. “It’ll be another 50, 60, 70 years before this farm comes back on the open market.“
The sense that Iowa’s agricultural land is both scarce and gaining in value has driven the average price to a record-setting $11,400 per acre last year. Now Iowa farmers are bidding not only against neighbors, but out-of-state investors including professional athletes, well-known billionaires and the Mormon Church.
The Gazette spent four months searching county assessor records in all 99 counties, looking at maps and talking with land agents, farmers and investor owners to get a sense of who owns Iowa farmland. Here are some of our findings:
- An investing arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known to many Iowans as the Mormon Church, owns at least 22,000 acres of Iowa farm land. At the average per-acre price, that land is worth more than $250 million.
- Lee County land prices have shot up as developers and investors compete for land around the Iowa Fertilizer Co. “All these big investment groups want to jump on the bandwagon,” one Lee County farmer said.
- A Tennessee family has bought at least 5,000 acres of land in northwest Iowa using at least 10 different names....
....MUCH MORE
HT: Farmlandgrab
