Amid hot market, ISU Extension offering seminars on cash rent of farmland

OSAGE — Iowa State University Extension is hosting a series of seminars across the state about renting or owning farmland. The first two will be held in Mitchell and Mahaska Counties on July 26.

“Right now, the marketplace for farmland is pretty crazy,” said Gary Wright, an ISU Extension farmland management specialist based in Spirit Lake.

More than half of Iowa cropland is rented. Under state law, September 1 is the date by which a tenant or landlord has to notify the other party if they want to terminate a lease or rental agreement. Wright said at each seminar ISU Extension staff review market prices and the factors influencing 2023 cash rental rates for farmland.

“We’ve got some weather issues that are kind of hanging over the top of our head in terms of how much rain are we going to get…There are some projections now that would suggest La Nina is going to hang around a little bit longer,” he said. “Not as directly, maybe, but input costs and just in general inflationary rates, world inflationary rates.”

Many farmland rental agreements have a flat, per acre rate. Flexible leases calculate the rental rate based on the costs of inputs like seeds, diesel and fertilizer as well as yields and the actual price for the crop once it’s sold, “to share the risk a little bit from the landlord to the tenant a little more than what just a flat cash rent lease might do,” Wright said.

Find the dates and locations of the seminars in each county here. Registration is required. The Mitchell County meeting will take place at the Osage Public Safety Center at 1 o’clock on July 26th.

A survey of farmers, landowners, realtors, bankers, and professional farm managers found cash rent for high quality corn and soybean ground in Iowa averaged in the range of $250s per acre for the current growing season. An average acre of Iowa farmland was valued at about $9800 last fall. In May, a farm in Plymouth County sold for $25,000 an acre.