Land values in 2024 remained strong despite being faced with headwinds heading into 2025, which, Kevin Brooks, with the University of Illinois Extension, says is partly due to the cash positions of farms/farmers throughout the state.
“What’s interesting though is that 59% of the farms are still being bought by farmers.”
When looking at land sale trends across Illinois, Brooks says western Illinois saw the largest declines in excellent farmland sales.
“The decreases on excellent type soils showed bigger declines than those in good soils, which were flat to slightly down,” says Brooks. “Those are the farms that they can do a good job of producing high yields, right along with the excellent farms, but there’s something about them that there’s a little bit more risk. Maybe drainage is more of an issue, more droughty conditions.”
This is in contrast with farmland sales in southern Illinois.
“In southern Illinois, the land value is not only held, but we saw an increase in value. Some of that comes from the fact that in recent years, some of the yields in Southern Illinois have been extremely good, depending upon weather.”
Brooks adds that this interest in poorer soil in southern Illinois comes as farmers started seeing excellent yields in those fields.
