Jaw Dropping Returns – Farmland Prices Jumped 10% in 2015

To become a successful farmer you have to be outstanding in your field, if you know what I meanBut as most investors know, commodity prices have been in a slump over the past couple of years. This means many grain farmers have to live a very tough life. Perhaps some of them barley survive from wheat to wheat! But things may not be as bad as they seem because crop sales in 2015 were some of the strongest Canadian farmers have ever seen, and was cited as a contributing factor to growing farmland prices.

 Canadian Farmland Values Grow 10.1% in 2015

The national agency, Farm Credit Canada, recently released its annual farmland value report about the previous year’s farming landscape. As it turns out in 2015 the average Canadian farmland price increased 10.1%. This is absolutely incredible! 😀

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Farmland prices are assessed using recent comparable sales. These sales must be arm’s-length transactions. All provinces saw their average farmland values increase and Manitoba experienced the highest increase at 12.4%. The full report is on FCC’s site.

After this year’s adjustment using the 9.4% Saskatchewan increase from the new FCC report my farmland should now be worth $129/acre more than last year. Since I have about 300 acres of Saskatchewan farmland, that’s almost $39,000 of capital appreciation in one year. Whoop Whoop!

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Farmland Historical Performance

Here’s a look at historical farmland values in Canada from 1985 to 2015 according to FCC.

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Holy 23-consecutive-years-of-increases, Batman! The country has not seen an overall decline in farm prices since 1992, lol.  Over the past 5 years alone, Canadian farmland values in general have increased 111%. That means someone who purchased farm property in 2010 would be able to sell their land today for more than twice what they initially paid for it. And if they were to have used an 8 to 1 leverage ratio like me by borrowing money from the bank to invest, then their profits would be nearly 900%.

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But anyone with common sense knows that this level of growth is not sustainable. 😕 If interest rates were determined by the free market instead of manipulated by central bankers, then a 2% to 4% annual appreciation of farmland on average would be more plausible over the long run.

Speculation and Risks

Farmland continued to thrive in 2015 for the same reasons as the trend in the previous year, and the year before that. Low interest rates, relatively high crop receipts, and less supply due to the expansion of cities, particularly in the prairies, all contribute to a strong demand for agricultural land. Investors and speculators, some possibly from outside the country, have also helped to push up farmland prices, but not by much, as explained by the Chief Ag Economist of Farm Credit Canada.

“While the presence of non-traditional buyers with an investor profile may have contributed to the growing demand of farmland in some areas, it’s the producers that still made up the vast majority of purchases in 2015.” ~J.P. Gervais, FCC

So that’s a relief to hear. But hold the pickles, because it’s not all good news for farm owners. Although prices are higher in every province, the rate of growth slowed in 6 provinces compared to the previous year. And the average farmland value increase of 10.1% in 2015 is lower than the 14.3% increase in 2014 and the 22.1% increase in 2013.

Furthermore, U.S. farmland prices have only increased 2.4% in 2015, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, and the Canadian agricultural landscape tend to lag the U.S. market by a year or two.

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And if interest rates start to rise in the next couple of years, we could see farm values in many provinces stagnate, or even come down.

In my blog post earlier this week I argued that the U.S. could be on the precipice of another recession. The International Monetary Fund also put out a warning a couple days ago about weakness in the global economy. The IMF lowered its growth expectations for Canada, the U.S. and just about every other country and region in the world. So with a dovish outlook on monetary policy across the developed countries for the foreseeable future, it appears cheap money and inflated asset prices are possibly here to stay for awhile.

But as I’ve pointed out in the past, I don’t care whether or not farmland is in a bubble, and I don’t try to predict when bubbles burst. Those questions are not particularly important to me. Since I can’t read the tea leaves, what I’m more interested in is holding onto assets that will provide me with a reasonably competitive risk-adjusted return. Based on that criteria, farmland shall continue to be an important part of my investment portfolio, for now. 🙂

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Random Useless Fact:

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Finance Journey
04/14/2016 6:58 am

Congrats! $39,000 of capital appreciation in one year is amazing. This is the ways to get rich in a smart way. Another success story for leverage.

Lots of people afraid to take risk.

By the way you are very very closed to $1M net asset 😀 . Keep it up.

FJ

Anon
Anon
04/14/2016 10:37 am

“Another success story for leverage. Lots of people afraid to take risk.”

Survivouurship bias.
How many failure stories for leverage are there?

Income Surfer
04/14/2016 4:03 pm

Thanks for sharing F35. I was interested to read of your increases, because my family’s farmland in Kansas declined slightly this year. I was a little surprised to see the US map, because I thought most farming areas…..or at least those where development had not gained steam…..would have declined. Your map doesn’t seem to support that. I also noticed your chart of historical Canadian prices is a great deal different than price movements in America. In america for instance, the late 90s and very early 2000s saw demand dry up and prices decline. I’ll have to think further about the effect of currencies.

Thanks again
-Bryan

Stephen
Stephen
04/15/2016 1:38 pm

Great gain! I was actually talking to an operations manager at work about farmland the other day. He’s invested in Alberta farm land and got into it over 10 years ago. He’s pretty certain to get into it now is way too late as they’ve tried to purchase more in the past few years and are getting outbid by 10-15%.

Do you think you’ll be trying to invest in more farmland in the future or is that enough eggs in that basket for you? If you’re looking into income properties instead come my way! 😉

Stephen
Stephen
04/22/2016 4:04 pm

If you weren’t 40% heavy, do you think you would continue to purchase if you could? Or do you really think the gains will start to match that of the US and be single digits for the foreseeable future?

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[…] still makes up a rather large piece of the pie chart. I can’t complain that my farmland went up 10% in value, but I would like to see my stocks and fixed income allocation increase to create a more balanced […]