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By Jingyi Tong, Michael Bootsma, Wendong Zhang, and Wei Zhang
The number of cash lease agreements in Iowa has steadily increased over the past few decades, with fixed cash leases being the dominant form. However, flexible leases, particularly those tied to both crop price and yield, saw increased adoption post- 2002 and have maintained a steady market share since 2012. Using the Iowa Farmland Ownership and Tenure Survey (2002-2022), this study explores factors correlating with the adoption of flexible lease arrangement. Findings indicate that flexible leases are more prevalent in long-term, trust- based arrangements. Key factors include landowner age, farm visit frequency, and soil productivity, with variations observed based on landowners’ operating status, ownership structure, and geographic location.
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By Jeffrey R. Wright and John R.C. Robinson
U.S. crop producers have historically managed risk by participating in federal price and income support programs. While early farm programs focused on reducing agricultural output, programs in the last two decades have become structured more like insurance. Calculating payments from current programs has become more involved and deciding which programs will best fit a producer’s needs is, unfortunately, not always straightforward. The choice of which Title I farm program to enroll in is modeled as a quadratic integer programming problem. This framework is used to determine optimum program selection for representative upland cotton production in Hale County, Texas.
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By Cody Dahl and JoAnn Wall
California’s new subsidence best management practices (BMPs), drafted under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, present a turning point for rural appraisal practice. Traditional reliance on past sales and conventional production assumptions is increasingly inadequate where groundwater cutbacks tied to critical head thresholds may abruptly shorten the economic life of orchards. This paper assesses how BMPs complicate the application of cost, sales comparison, and income approaches and provides guidance on integrating hydrologic indicators, groundwater sustainability criteria, and regulatory risk into appraisal reports.
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By Christopher T. Bastian, Bree Thompson, Chian Jones Ritten, L. Steven Smutko, Vardges Hovhannisyan, and Amy M. Nagler
A large percentage of agricultural commodity sales are transacted via private negotiation. Research suggests sellers are disadvantaged when negotiating because of the lack of information on private transactions and risks they face, especially after incurring production costs. Finding ways to better seller outcomes is important for their financial welfare and overall market efficiency. We examine what bargaining strategies offer the most promise for improving seller outcomes. Our results indicate encouraging sellers to make the first move with a high offer—and making small concessions during negotiation—best helps them improve sale price. Additionally having an alternative sale outlet if the current negotiation fails improves their outcome.
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By Alexis G. Allen, Joe L. Outlaw, and Bart L. Fischer
Considering that income support provisions have been decoupled from production in all farm bills since the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996, base acres are no longer reflective of planted acres in the United States. Several alternatives have been discussed to better align base acres with current plantings. To comprehensively evaluate the alternatives, this study undertook a national analysis utilizing public data from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency (USDA-FSA). The results highlight winners and losers across different crops and regions.
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By Rabail Chandio, Katherine Dentzman, Caroline Strawhacker, and Sarah Al-Mazroa Smith
Farmland has long been both an agricultural resource and a financial asset, yet recent decades have seen new actors and investment logics reshape U.S. farmland markets. Drawing on interviews with landowners, appraisers, farm managers, lenders, and brokers in Iowa, this study examines how stakeholders interpret farmland as an investment. Findings highlight five themes: land’s stability and tangibility, evolving return expectations, investor diversity, rental market dynamics, and the role of technology. Results reveal heterogeneity in motivations and practices and suggest implications not only for market behavior but also for extension programming that supports diverse landowners and investors.
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By Enil Serrano, Grant Gardner, and Hunter Biram
Farmers face growing production and price risks that traditional Farm Service Agency (FSA) programs and crop insurance only partially address. This article reviews existing decision tools and introduces the Crop Insurance Decision Maker (CIDM), a web-based platform that uses stochastic simulations to project expected net revenues across insurance products and coverage levels. By incorporating farmer risk preferences and county-level data, CIDM improves transparency and supports more informed enrollment in FSA and crop insurance programs. Case studies demonstrate how CIDM enhances risk management decisions, balancing income stability with financial resilience.
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By Megan N. Hughes, Chelsea Plummer, and Michael R. Langemeier
Labor is a significant expense for crop farms. This paper updates labor efficiency and labor productivity benchmark values using financial data from a sample of non-irrigated crop farms in Kansas. Based on a five-year farm-level average from 2020 to 2024, the mean labor efficiency was 19%, and the mean labor productivity was $577,739. Farms with both a below average labor efficiency and above average labor productivity have an average labor efficiency of 12.6% and an average labor productivity of $801,420.
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By Olivia Reynolds, Grant Allyn, James Mintert, and Michael Langemeier
We estimate returns to six corn and soybean crop marketing strategies using cash corn and soybean prices from the northeast Indiana and southwest Indiana crop reporting districts along with Chicago Board of Trade corn and soybean futures prices from the 2004 through the 2023 crop marketing years. Strategies are compared to a baseline strategy of making all cash sales at harvest time. Risk/return frontiers are estimated for each crop and location using a Target MOTAD model. Results confirm that a variety of optimal marketing strategy portfolios can be used to substantially increase prices above those available at harvest time.
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By Shelby A. Sumner and Kellie Curry Raper
It is crucial for cattle producers to understand how management practices influence market prices for their livestock. This paper assists cow-calf producers by providing insights into the financial implications of the castration decision prior to marketing feeder cattle. Using data from Oklahoma feeder cattle auctions, this study quantifies the impact of marketing feeder cattle as bulls on prices across weight categories. The results indicate an average bull discount of $11.69 per hundredweight that remains constant as animal weight increases, translating into per-head revenue losses ranging from $35 to $111 depending on animal size.
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By Savannah T. Jones and Kellie Curry Raper
Seller reputation has long been considered to impact feeder cattle price by those in
the cattle industry, yet from a research perspective, it has proven difficult to quantitatively measure that impact. Physical attributes and management attributes are either observable or certifiable. However, regularly recorded market data does not capture a measure of seller reputation since it is not physically observable. This research reports cattle buyer responses to a survey designed to characterize those cattle buyers and to begin to understand the market value of seller reputation by eliciting bids for varying layers of management and marketing practices with seller reputation.
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The Journal of the ASFMRA has a long history of sharing farm management ideas. A textual analysis of 1,752 articles evaluated language and authorship trends since 1937. Over time, fewer articles were sole-authored, and common title words shifted, reflecting evolving concerns of the profession. Single authorship declined from 80% prior to the 1970s to less than 40% after 1990. While “farm” remained the most frequent title word, the second most common term in the earlier decades, “appraisal,” gave way 142 to “farmland,” and terms like “economics,” “analysis,” and “risk” only became common after the mid-1980s. Results are relevant to prospective authors and those interested in the rural property professions.
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By Indira Aitkulova, Emily Balsamo, and Fred Seamon
We examine corn and soybean futures price movements in the periods surrounding the release of the monthly World Agricultural Supply Demand Estimates (WASDE) by the United States Department of Agriculture. Using polling estimations to calculate a degree of “surprise” for each WASDE release, we found statistically significant relationships between U.S. corn and soybean ending stock data and relevant corn and soybean futures intraday price movements post-release, with the nature of correlations changing as time from the release passed. Additionally, directionally correct drift prior to release suggests that we also observed informed trading and/or superior internal research.
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By Yingyun Lin, Mykel Taylor, and Sunjae Won
Previous studies show that non-local buyers typically pay a price premium for farmland but most adopt a simple dummy variable to measure buyers’ non-locality, which neglects the heterogeneity among non-local buyers. Utilizing a parcel-level farmland transaction dataset, we construct a distance-based variable to measure buyers’ non-locality, using multiple regression to investigate their impacts on farmland market. Our results indicate that an additional 1% buyer-to- parcel distance can lead to farmland price increase by 4.3%, suggesting that buyers located farther away typically pay more for land. It is probably because they face greater asymmetric information and possess more limited local market knowledge.
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By Sunjae Won and Mykel R. Taylor
This study investigates how short-run population growth influences the development option value of agricultural land, defined as the per-acre gap between market and current use values. Using parcel-level Alabama data (2016-2020), we quantify how both own and neighboring population density changes affect farmland valuation. Results show that changes in population density—particularly within a 10-mile radius—are positively associated with the development option value, with robust spatial spillovers (i.e., effects from nearby population growth). These effects vary by land use type. The findings highlight how dynamic development pressure, rather than static conditions, drives valuation gaps, informing farmland appraisal, tax policy, and land use planning.
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By Rabail Chandio, Mykel Taylor, Chrystol Thomas, and Wendong Zhang
The 2025 ASFMRA FutureEd Forum brought together university instructors, ASFMRA chapter leaders, and practitioners to examine how farm and rural property appraisal is taught across U.S. colleges. Using instructor surveys, forum discussions, and case studies from three land-grant universities, this article documents the objectives, structure, and challenges of university-based appraisal instruction. These courses emphasize foundational appraisal concepts, including scope of work, ethics, highest and best use, and the income, cost, and sales comparison approaches, reinforced through project- based learning and strong support from local ASFMRA chapters. We highlight effective teaching practices and opportunities to strengthen collaboration between academia and the profession.