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Strong grain demand fuels aggressive Iowa land pricesStrong grain demand fuels aggressive Iowa land prices

Best Places to Farm: Iowa is the perfect spot to grow corn, but it doesn’t lead the country in return on farm assets.

Pam Caraway, Executive Editor

May 17, 2024

3 Min Read
Three men talking with barn in background
BUILDING SUCCESS: Work smart, says Kelvin Leibold (left), retired Iowa State University Extension farm management specialist, as he talks economics with Stockdale Farms’ Mike Hess and Mark Guy. “Working hard doesn’t create success,” Leibold says. Pam Caraway

Editor's note: Farm Futures’ exclusive Best Places to Farm report ranks the financial performance of 3,056 counties. By analyzing proprietary data and the recently released results from USDA’s 2022 Census of Agriculture, Farm Futures averaged weighted ranks of the ratios on return on assets, profit margins and asset turnover for each county. How does your county rank? Visit the interactive map to check the ranking of 3,056 counties and browse other stats.

Gathered in the farm office, the leaders of Stockdale Farms in Franklin County, Iowa, look similar to those news scenes of the state’s residents caucusing — a couple generations of Iowans leading the nation.

For corn production, Iowa does. And these farmers contribute to that. But they are gathered to talk about Farm Futures’ study Best Places to Farm.

“I’m not surprised to be in the Top 500. In terms of good places to farm, I’d put us in the top 10,” Mark Guy says.

Guy with wife Linda partners with Mike Hess and Linda’s parents, Steve and Virginia Stockdale. They laugh easily as they talk about current farm economics and the future for their county of Franklin.

The group is surprised that measured by a profit-tracking performance metric — the barometer that Farm Futures uses to rank 3,056 counties in the country — Franklin County is No. 445. The Iowa county with the highest ranking is Lyon at No. 342.

Related:Is your county the Best Place to Farm?

Franklin County, Iowa, Best Places to Farm statistics presented in a table

At first, they all wondered, “How can that be?”

But these farmers and their Iowa State Extension adviser believe they know: It’s land prices. And they know what fuels it:

  • a thriving livestock industry

  • local processors including ethanol plants and soybean crushers, which help bolster basis for corn and soybeans

  • wind farms, a new entrant

As for wind farms, some operations are paid $8,000 a year per turbine.

“The wind industry is one more driver of income in this county,” Guy says, although Stockdale Farms is not interested in such a venture.

Stable fertilizer prices

For Stockdale Farms, the better investment is the hog buildings on their property. Like many of their neighbors, they lease out buildings and use the hog manure to fertilize their fields. That manure helps stabilize an inconsistent input cost.

“If the buildings are income-neutral, that’s good enough for us,” Guy says. “The fertilizer end of it is a bigger deal for us.”

Stabilizing a major input cost along with a significant improvement in grain basis is highly valuable to farmers on this island between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, points out Kelvin Leibold, who recently retired as a farm management specialist at Iowa State University Extension.

Related:Where are the best places to farm in U.S.?

End users — ethanol plants, soybean crushers and feed mills scattered throughout the area — create a stronger basis, the inland equivalent of a tropical breeze.

“Competition for the grain is what makes this a good place to farm,” Guy says.

Learn more about Farm Futures' Best Places to Farm study and view the interactive map to see where your county ranks.

2022, 2017 and 2012 Best Places to Farm maps

About the Author

Pam Caraway

Executive Editor, Farm Futures

Pam Caraway leads Farm Futures, the national business publication for Farm Progress dedicated to providing information that helps leading agricultural producers and their financial partners drive economic sustainability for family farms. Pam's experience spans 40 years of writing about farming for farmers, including newspapers, trade magazines and marketing for top-tier agricultural manufacturers. She holds a bachelor's degree in communications from the University of West Florida and a master's degree in digital marketing from Northern Illinois University.

Writing about farming is a dream job for this Air Force brat who considers the family dairy farm in upstate New York her childhood home. Her family returned to that area each time their RED HORSE member deployed to war - Vietnam, Korea, the Philippines. Her dad's military service also took the family to Washington State, Texas, Florida and Alaska. Pam's perspective is shaped by friends and family who work to maintain generational farming legacies. Her passion is to provide information that helps each one achieve their family farming goals.

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