By Jason Vance

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s annual look at farmland values and cash rents was released. USDA Chief Economist Seth Meyer says cash rents are showing flat value changes year-over-year while farmer’s assessed value of their agricultural real estate increase by 4.3 percent.

“The land value is essentially ‘what do you think the value of your land is’,” Meyer said. “And then on the other side of that is what you actually spent on cash rent and those cash rents were largely determined in the fall of last year.”

Meyer talked about why he thinks late 2024 and 2025 to date might reflect a cooling of increasing land values and cash rents.

“As we went through say 2021, 2022 and even 2023 with very high commodity prices we saw strong growth in both cash rents and land values,” Meyer said. “Even with current commodity prices at lower amounts, I think we have a cooling but the cooling is interestingly much more on the cash rent side in terms of year-over-year growth than it is on how producers view the value of their land.”

Breaking down land values by crop land and pastures, Meyer says produces access crop land increased 4.7 percent in 2025 to $5,830 per acre.

“So accessing the crop land is increasing at a greater rate than overall ag land,” Meyer said. “Pasture land is showing an even larger increase at 4.9 percent and hitting $1,920.”

Farm real estate value by state reflected year-over-year increases in all 48 states in the contiguous U.S. led by an 8.4 percent farm land increase in North Carolina.