Two years ago, a neighbor put up 160 acres of cropland for sale in South Dakota, and that's when Gindo thought he could finally own and operate his dream farm. Mr. Gindo estimated that it would take five thousand or six thousand dollars to do it.
Mr. Gindo was unable to watch as the price went up until it was double what he had expected.
He said he couldn't compete with the amount of people paying. Everything has to be financed for someone like me who doesn't have an inheritance.
In farming communities across the nation, the value of farmland is hitting record highs and often pricing out small or beginning farmers. According to the most recent figures from the Agriculture Department, the state's farmland values increased by 18.7 percent over the course of the next four years. Cropland reached $5,050 an Acre and pastureland was at $1,650 an Acre, the highest values on record.
A series of economic forces, including high prices for commodity crops, a robust housing market, and low interest rates, have combined to create a "perfect storm" for farmland values.
Small farmers like Mr. Gindo are going up against deep-pocketed investors, including private equity firms and real estate developers, prompting some experts to warn of far-reaching consequences for the farming sector.
The value of farmland has increased due to the booming housing market and other factors.
Professor Henderson said that when housing starts to go up with new building construction it puts pressure on farmland. That leads to a cascading effect into land values further away.
Government subsidies to farmers have gone up in the last few years. In addition to traditional programs like crop insurance payments, the Agriculture Department gave $23 billion to farmers who were hurt by the Trump administration's trade war. The government contribution to farm income is expected to go from 20 percent to 8 percent in the next four years.
Research shows that farmland values increase as a result of those payments and the promise of additional assistance.
According to a professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University, there is an expectation in the market that the government will play a role when farm incomes decline.
In the face of stock and real estate market fluctuations,ager investors are turning to farmland. Bill Gates, the Microsoft co- founder and a billionaire, is the biggest private farmland owner in the country and recently won approval to buy 2,100 acres in North Dakota.
Tim Koch, vice president at an agricultural financial cooperative in the Midwest, said that the number of private equity funds looking to buy stakes in farmland has gone up. Professor Ifft said that pension funds look at farmland as a stable investment.
Outside interest has been seen by farmers. A group of agricultural workers, including Nathaniel Bankhead, banded together to save up to half a million dollars to buy 60 acres of land. He said the collective has been outbid by real estate developers, investors and urban transplants for months.
He said that places that he had looked at as potential farmland were being bought up in cash before he could even get to the land. I get hired by my clients to do as a hobby what I am trying to do as a full time job. It's difficult to watch.
The current landscape is described as a form of digital feudalism by Mr. Bankhead. Wealthy landowners drive up land prices, contract with agricultural designers like himself to implement their vision and then hire a caretakers to work the land, pricing out employees from becoming owners themselves
It will never be yours, because they lock that person to this new flavor of serfdom.
Unable to afford land in her home state of Florida, she moved her flower farm to South Carolina. In Redland, a historically agricultural region in the Miami area, Ms. Trujillo kept bees on a parcel of her brother-in-law's five acres of plant nursery.
Real estate developers driving up land values and pushing out agriculture producers made it difficult for her to purchase her own land when she wanted to expand her farm.
The price of a five-acre property in the area has gone up. I left Miami and Florida as a whole.
She said that farming is a very difficult job. Land insecurity makes it worse. There were a lot of times where I thought 'Oh my God.' I won't be able to do this. This isn't doable
As small and beginning farmers are shut out, the prohibitively high land values may have a domino effect on the sector as a whole.
According to Brian Philpott, the chief executive of AgAmerica, the average loan size has increased as farms consolidate. He argued that this could cause a farm crisis.
We don't know if we have the skills to farm it. If the answer is going to be, we are going to have passive owners own this land and lease it out.
Professor Henderson warned that current farmers may face increased financial risk if they try to leverage their high farmland values.
He said that they would use debt to do it. "They'll stretch themselves out."
As the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, economists and farmland lenders said the value of farmland seemed to have stopped. Some people think values will stay high next year with high commodity prices.
While working full time as a comptroller, Mr. Gindo bought seven acres of land to raise livestock and rent another 40 acres to grow corn and soybeans.
He has stopped looking for a farm of his own because he wants to pass on the land to his child. He was concerned about his landlord raising his rent. The landlord has refrained because Mr. Gindo helps him.
Mr. Gindo said that he doesn't have to give him his land. He can make more with another person.
In Florida, the owner of the land where her brother-in-law's nursery sits has spoken of selling the plot while prices remain high, so he too has begun looking for his own property
It is a big fear for a lot of these farmers and nursery owners who are renting land, because you never know when the owner is going to say: 'You know what'. She said that this year she would be selling and that she had to leave.
Mr Bankhead said he considered giving up on owning a farm as friends left the profession.
He is committed to staying in the field and trying to keep land in families' hands and show there is more to do with it than sell it to real estate developers. It never hurts that I can't have my own garden or animals in my house.
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