The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently released its annual report on farmland in America, which showed a loss of nearly two million acres of farmland over the last year.
Eric Sarff is the President of Murray Wise and Associates, a farmland broker and auction house that oversees transactions nationally. He says there are several reasons why farmland acres are declining.
This isn?t a recent phenomenon either. Since 2000, USDA data show the loss of 50 million acres across the country. It works out to losing 4.3 acres of farmland every minute of every day. Sarff says this shrinking supply of farmable acres, combined with ever increasing demand for food, is very beneficial to landowners who are seeing values climb.
Sarff says that the demand for farmland is strong.
Murray Wise recently released a detailed land review report, which looks at recent farm sales in Illinois and Iowa. Those reports are available at www.MurrayWiseAssociates.com
