The USDA recently released their 2018 Land Values Summary, which reports average agricultural land values across the United States. To view the report, click here.

The report looks at the value of agricultural land across the country.  The broadest measure is the “farm real estate value,” which measures the value of all land and buildings on farms.  For 2018, the average farm real estate value of the United States was $3,140 per acre, up $60 per acre from last year.  For Texas, the average was $2,280 per acre, a 9.1 percent increase from last year.  The Southern Plains Region (Texas and Oklahoma) reported the highest increase in farm real estate value for the year.  Not surprisingly, the Corn Belt Region (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, and Ohio) reported the highest farm real estate values at $6,430 per acre (up 2.7 percent from 2017) and the Mountain Region (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) had the lowest farm real estate value average at $1,140 per acre.

For cropland values, US average prices were $4,130 per acre, an increase of $40 per acre from last year.  For Texas, the average was $2,100 per acre (up 4.5 percent from 2017).  This breaks down into $2,400 acreage for irrigated cropland and $2,050 for irrigated cropland here in Texas.  Regionally, the Corn Belt had the highest average prices for cropland at $6,710 per acre.  New York posted the highest value for a single state at $12,900 per acre.  Lowest values regionally were in the Mountain Region at $1,810/acre.  The state reporting the lowest average cropland value was Montana at $1,030 per acre.

For pasture value, the US average was $1,390 (up $40 per acre from 2017).  Texas came in at $1,750 per acre, an increase of $1,000 (9.1 percent) from last year.  The Southeast Region (Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina) posted the highest average pastureland value at $3,390 per acre while the Mountain Region posted the lowest at $634 per acre.

For additional information on land values in Texas broken down by regions within the state, click here to learn more about the Texas Chapter of the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers Land Value Trends Report.

If you would like information on average cash lease values, click here for a prior blog post on that report.