A U-S-D-A survey finds the value of Iowa farmland and farm buildings rose dramatically in the past year. According to the U-S-D-A, Iowa farmland sold for an average price of 84-hundred dollars an acre in August — a 20 percent increase from the same month a year ago. No other Midwestern state is recording farm land values that high. The average price of farmland in Illinois in August was 78-hundred an acre; in Minnesota it was 47-hundred-50; in Wisconsin it was 44-hundred. Nebraska and Missouri farmland was selling for an average of about three-thousand an acre in August. In the Dakotas, it ranged from 17- to 18-hundred an acre. Economists say Iowa’s farm land price boom has been directly tied to farm income gains.

(Radio Iowa)