April 5, 2021
Wendong Zhang, assistant professor, was quoted in an April 3 Iowa Farmer Today story, "Farmers and agents dissect recent rise in farmland values."
Wendong Zhang, an assistant professor of economics at Iowa State University, runs the annual survey conducted by ISU. That survey is conducted each November, and last fall’s showed a small increase, but Zhang says the market has heated up since then so the realtors’ result wasn’t a complete surprise.
The two keys, he says, have been very low interest rates and a surge since last August in commodity prices. He says a third reason appears to be a lack of land hitting the market.