land prices Archives

Prairie farmland rentals rates difficult to track

Rental rates could be important in 2025 as grain producers deal with lower grain prices and relatively high input costs

By Robert Arnason March 30, 2025

In Red Deer County in central Alberta, a survey found cropland leasing rates were around $75 per acre. Renting that same land could be 40-50 per cent more expensive in 2025 — but it’s difficult to even make a guess because land rents are considered a “dark market.”

It’s not unreasonable for parents who’ve spent decades building an operation to hope that a successor is committed for the long haul.

Columns, Farm Life

How to talk about ‘fair family price’ for land, other assets

Seeds of Encouragement: A family farm transfer likely involves some gifting, given the market values for farmland

By Elaine Froese, Glenn Dogterom November 7, 2024

Elaine writes: “Fair family price” versus “fair market value price” (or FFP vs. FMV) is often a tense conversation between a farm’s founders, needing to sell assets for their personal income stream, and a buyer, often the cash-strapped successor on the farm. To offer readers some wisdom on this conversation I asked our coaching teammate […] Read more

Columns, Markets

A hundred years of Prairie farmland prices

Don’t bet the farm on that much-anticipated easing of interest rates

By Les Henry February 9, 2024

Farmland prices continue to go up like a helium balloon, leading to speculation that it might continue and speculation in land as a commodity. In this piece we will look at a long history and provide some guesses about the future. Anyone who thinks they can actually predict the future is living in dreamland. Figure […] Read more

Real estate apps are already big business in residential markets. If they cut transaction costs, why not in agriculture too?
Photo: Getty Images

General, Reuters

U.S. Lawmakers seek to limit corporate, foreign ownership of farmland

Farm groups, lawmakers are concerned that foreign, investor ownership is driving up prices and threatening national security

By GFM Network News July 27, 2023

Washington | Reuters – U.S. lawmakers from both parties are pushing legislation that would limit who can own American farmland, with a latest effort from Democratic Senator Cory Booker aimed at curbing corporate ownership. Farm groups and lawmakers are concerned that land buys by investors and foreign countries are driving up farmland prices and threatening […] Read more

Neil Townsend (left) of FarmLink and Jason Newton of Nutrien discuss farm consolidation at the Grain World conference in Saskatoon on Nov. 28, 2019. (MarketsFarm photo by Glen Hallick)

Crops

Grain World: Farm consolidation key to increasing yields

By GFM Network News December 4, 2019

Saskatoon | MarketsFarm — Consolidating farms — going from numerous small operations to fewer, but much larger, farms — is central to improving crop yields, according to grain industry observers Neil Townsend and Jason Newton. Townsend is the chief market analyst for FarmLink Marketing Solutions, while Newton is the chief economist and head of marketing […] Read more

General, Markets

Report shows slower pace for rising farmland values

By GFM Network News April 29, 2019

While lower-valued farmland more often showed a higher rate of increase, and price hikes varied from region to region, Canada’s farmland values on average have booked their slowest year-over-year rate of increase in almost a decade. That’s according to the annual Farmland Values Report from Farm Credit Canada (FCC), in which the federal ag lending […] Read more

Crops, Markets

FCC sees increase in Canadian farmland values slowing

By Allan Dawson, GFM Network News April 10, 2017

Farmland values in Canada, on average, appreciated in 2016 — and while it was less of an increase than the year before, the gain easily beat a bank GIC. Land prices here in Manitoba, which have been rising steadily since 1992, on average gained 12 per cent in both 2015 and 2014. But after four […] Read more

The kindness of others is often a factor in transactions like land rental.

Columns

Renting land: Sometimes it all works out for the best

Sometimes renting, farmland or houses, works just the way we’d like it to

By Toban Dyck February 7, 2017

My wife and I rented the upstairs of a brownstone house on Palmerston Avenue in Toronto. It was small. It was expensive. But it was an experience we won’t forget. Our landlords were Portuguese. They were elderly. They drove a mid-’80s Mercedes diesel car, tan colour. And they were generous. So generous. When they made […] Read more

Swaledale, a dale (valley) in Yorkshire. (CIA.gov)

Livestock, Reuters

England’s farmland prices fall ahead of Brexit vote

By Reuters, GFM Network News April 11, 2016

London | Reuters –– Farmland prices in England fell by 3.2 per cent in the first quarter of this year — the largest quarterly decline since 2008, weighed partly by uncertainty ahead of the June 23 referendum on European Union membership, estate agent Knight Frank said. Knight Frank’s Farmland Index fell to 19,538 pounds (C$35,881) […] Read more

Crops, Features

High land prices hurt new farmers

Price increases may be slowing, but it’s a tough time for farmers to buy land 

By Julienne Isaacs February 24, 2015

Western Canadian farmland has never been more expensive. According to J.P. Gervais, the chief economist for Farm Credit Canada (FCC), which provides data at the national level for Statistics Canada, farmland values continued to increase throughout 2014. “In a few months the report will be released, but we know that farmland values have continued to increase throughout […] Read more

GFM Network News

U.S. livestock: Cattle futures mixed

Most of Manitoba harvest wraps up for 2025

U.S. grains: Soybean, corn futures hit one-month highs as crude oil soars

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