Buying At The Peak?

Investors are rushing in to buy farm land:

Braden Janowski has never planted seeds or brought in a harvest. He doesn't even own overalls.
Yet when 430 acres of Michigan cornfields was auctioned last summer, it was Janowski, a brash, 33-year-old software executive, who made the winning bid. It was so high -- $4 million, 25 percent above the next-highest -- that some farmers stood, shook their heads and walked out. And Janowski figures he got the land cheap.
"Corn back then was around $4," he says from his office in Tulsa, Okla., stealing a glance at prices per bushel on his computer. Corn rose to almost $8 in June and trades now at about $7.
A new breed of gentleman farmer is shaking up the American heartland. Rich investors with no ties to farming, no dirt under their nails, are confident enough to wager big on a patch of earth -- betting that it's a smart investment because food will only get more expensive around the world.
They're buying wheat fields in Kansas, rows of Iowa corn and acres of soybeans in Indiana. And though farmers still fill most of the seats at auctions, the newcomers are growing in number and variety -- a Seattle computer executive, a Kansas City lawyer, a publishing executive from Chicago, a Boston money manager.

If prices get too high for people around the world to afford food, they will come down.  The speculation in grain and other commodities is rapidly getting out of control.  At some point, we will see a huge crash.  At that point, these farm prices will look as crazy as they are.  Even though I paid $4200 an acre for the farm next door to my house, my internal valuation in $3000.  That's where I think I am assured of making money every year, even when corn is back down at $4.