While the residential market sputters and the commercial real estate market cools, farmland property values are zooming. The US Department of Agriculture says that property values for farmland are up 8.8 percent in the past year.

Massachusetts has the most expensive farmland in the country at $12,200 an acre. The northeast has the highest regional price for farm acreage at $5,080 an acre of land. The Northern Plains had the cheapest land at $1,100 an acre, but prices for land in South Dakota jumped 21% over the past year as corn prices have soared.

So the news on the real estate front is not all bad, but we already knew that.

The value of all land and buildings on farms averaged $2,350 an acre at the start of this year, up 8.8 percent from a year earlier, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said today in an annual report. Surging corn, wheat and soybean prices boosted values in the Northern Plains, which includes Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota, by 15.5 percent, the biggest increase in the country, according to the report.

The boom reflects high commodity prices that may push net farm income to $92.3 billion this year from $88.7 billion last year, according to the USDA. The gains make farmers more likely to buy fertilizer and seeds from Monsanto Co. and Agrium Inc. and make new investments in tractors and trucks, said Bruce Babcock, director of the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University in Ames.  via Bloomberg.com

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