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Dig In

It is an unprecedented time for farmland sales. For young farmers, sky high land prices are preventing them from buying.

Since January 2021, Class A farmland prices in central Illinois have risen 35%, Luke Worrell of Worrell Land Services in Jacksonville told The Center Square.

Worrell works with the Illinois Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers and economists at the University of Illinois who track farmland prices. Every year, the society produces an extensive study of Illinois farmland values and leases for the previous year.

Class A acreage has the highest quality soil types and is 100% tillable. No matter what the quality of the farmland, however, prices have increased since January 2021, Worrell said.

“All other classes of land saw robust increases,” Worrell said.

Market indicators are still strong, but land sales traditionally slow down when crops go in. The number of transactions for the spring and summer have slowed down as they normally do, Worrell said. Commodity prices are still high, but so are input costs and the price of gas and oil and the price of machinery.

https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/fall-sales-may-