Each year the USDA, through the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), reports on agricultural land values.
Generally speaking farm real estate average values per acre have stayed relatively stable in New Mexico, Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming from 2015 to 2019. Across the Mountain Region, values have risen 8% over five years in large part due to a significant rise in values in both Idaho and Utah. In Idaho, farm real estate average land value per acre was upwards of $3000 / acre in 2019. The Mountain Region includes Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.
Farm values are defined as the value at which all land and buildings used for agricultural production, including dwellings, could be sold under current market conditions, if allowed to remain on the market for a reasonable amount of time.
FARM REAL ESTATE AVERAGE VALUE PER ACRE
According to the USDA, irrigated cropland may consist of both land that will or will not be irrigated during the current year, but still has the facilities and equipment to do so. Irrigated cropland values in Idaho out pace that of other states in the Mountain Region toping $6000 / acre in 2019.
IRRIGATED CROPLAND AVERAGE VALUE PER ACRE
Non-irrigated cropland values mostly tracked with the irrigated cropland values in all of the states featured, however the difference in values from irrigated to non-irrigated varied across the states. In Colorado, Montana, and Idaho non-irrigated land values were around 27 to 28% of the irrigated land values. In New Mexico, non-irrigated land values were 11% of the irrigated land values. In Wyoming, non-irrigated land values were 35% of the irrigated land values. This differentiation can be partially attributed to the difference in crops grown on irrigated land in New Mexico versus Wyoming. The USDA defines non-irrigated cropland as land that only receives water by natural rainfall.
NON-IRRIGATED CROPLAND AVERAGE VALUE PER ACRE
Across the Mountain Region, pasture values also range. As in farm real estate land values, pasture acre values in Utah and Idaho are on the high end of the range with values of $1240 / acre and $1560 / acre respectively. In Utah, the 2019 land value per acre on pasture land represented a 6.9% growth year-over-year from 2018, which contributed to the 2.4% growth from 2018 to 2019 across the Mountain Region. The other large gainers in terms of land value on pasture land were New Mexico (5.8%) and Idaho (4.7%), though in terms of total value New Mexico had the lowest pasture average value per acre in 2019 at $417 / acre.
The USDA categorizes pastureland as land that is normally grazed by livestock. Pasture does not need to have livestock grazing on it at the time of interview or during the current year in order to be valued as pasture or grazing land.