Des Moines Register:
But the signs indicate agriculture's economic profile has never been higher:
- Farmland values, a significant portion of net worth for Iowa landowners, have climbed 77 percent since 2006. At auctions since the 2010 harvest, hardened farmers and managers have dropped their jaws as sales of $9,000 per acre or more became increasingly common. - Iowa banks report that farm loans are helping them outperform urban banks hurt by downturns in commercial construction and housing.
- On Wall Street, shares of Deere & Co., Iowa's largest manufacturer, have doubled to $100 in the last year. The Bridgestone/Firestone plant on Second Avenue in Des Moines has raised its roof to accommodate the need for ever-bigger tractor tires.
- Pioneer Hi-Bred is preparing a new building in Johnston to house some of the 400 hires it will bring on this year to meet the growing demand for seeds.
But farmers know that agriculture can turn quickly. Older farmers, themselves children of the survivors of the Great Depression of the 1920s and '30s, recall the farm crisis that wiped out one-third of Iowa's farms in the 1980s.
"If we don't see the 1980s again, I'll sure be surprised," observed Marshall Mussig of Gladbrook.
Even a young farmer such as 25-year-old Chris Gaesser, who wasn't born when the farm crisis began in the early 1980s, knows the bill for any farm boom eventually comes due.
"We can't sustain $7 corn," Gaesser said.
The boom in commodities has generated memories of similar golden periods in the early 1920s and 1970s, both of which were followed by historic collapses in agriculture.
Bill Webb, a Mitchellville-area farmer, put down a successful bid of $9,550 per acre for 132 acres of farmland near Bondurant at an auction in late March.
"This is the best I've seen farming in 31 years," he said.
But he added: "It never lasts. We'll pay for it in a couple of years."
It is important to remember how bad it could get, because things haven't been this good for a really long time.
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