Ethanol Fueling Land Market Advances

Nebraska farm real estate market values and cash rents show sizable increases for the year ending February 1, 2007. Preliminary findings from the annual University of Nebraska Farm Real Estate Market Developments Survey indicate the average per-acre value of agricultural land rose 14 percent over the past year (Figure 1 and Table 1). This was the largest annual all-land value increase of the past 19 years (Figure 1 and Table 1). Moreover, the percentage increase follows on three previous years of solid advances, which puts the state’s current all-land average value more than 50 percent higher than the 2003 level