What’s Cheaper: Bread or Farmland?

There’s a reason that a loaf of whole wheat bread is about what it costs for a compact car. Farmland prices were up 14 percent in 2006. Now figures are in for 2007 and guess what? Post another 23 percent rise in farmland values.

Oh, praise be the Energy Bill that slathers subsidies to corporate farmers growing corn! It’s amazing how swiftly Congress can act when it’s politically advantageous to do so. Ethanol is not the answer to our longterm energy needs, especially when some estimates say it costs a gallon of gas to produce a gallon of ethanol.  As this post on Oilism.com says, not much of green or sustainable energy sources are green.

Good thing we’re in Iraq, protecting “our” oil supplies!

Anyway, USA Today reported that the average farmland valuation has doubled since 2000:

“As home prices continue to slide nationwide, the value of farmland is setting records.

Demand for grain for food, fuel and export, along with low interest rates and a weakened dollar have raised farmland prices by double digits the past two years. Average values have doubled since 2000.

Farm real estate prices rose 20% to 23% in Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming in 2007, according to Farm Credit Services of America, an agricultural lender.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago reports that prices rose 15% for the first three quarters of 2007 in its district, which includes Iowa and parts of Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan. That’s on top of a 14% increase nationwide in 2006 — to a record average of $2,160 an acre — the U.S. Department of Agriculture says. Figures for 2007 will come out in summer.

The growth has attracted “a tidal wave of investors,” says Murray Wise of Illinois’ Westchester Group, which manages $500 million in client assets. “It’s everybody from the person concerned about the stock market to large government and corporate pension funds, insurance companies, hedge funds.”

Banner Year For Farm Land Prices

Ron Paul is a presidential candidate because he does not believe that a central bank should print money out of thin air, thus creating a house-of-cards economy on the verge of collapse. Ron Paul wants to abolish the Federal Reserve.

“Since the creation of the Federal Reserve, middle and working-class Americans have been victimized by a boom-and-bust monetary policy. In addition, most Americans have suffered a steadily eroding purchasing power because of the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies. This represents a real, if hidden, tax imposed on the American people,” Paul said in a 2002 speech.

Anyone watching the GOP debate last night had to take notice of Paul’s emphatic and sound argument that our economy is a mass of manipulations. To curry favor with the Reaganomics audience at the Reagan Library in California, Paul relayed a story about how Ronald Reagan told Congressman Paul 20 years ago that any nation whose economic system veers away from the gold standard is a flawed economy.

Which brings us to another form of hard currency: Land. Like gold, it’s value is almost impossible to undermine.

And to show how valuable land is, read this story out of Bismarck, N.D. Tribune, which quotes U.S.D.A. officials on the price of farmland in 2007:

Farm real estate values nationwide rose 14 percent from Jan. 1, 2006, to Jan 1. 2007, to a record average of $2,160 an acre, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

USDA spokesman Scott Shimmin said the report on 2007 farm real estate prices won’t be finished until this summer, though it appears last year will set another record.

Low interest rates, government farm programs and reinvestments to avoid taxes on capital gains are among the factors contributing to the record farm land prices, but record commodity prices are the main reason, he said.

“Commodity prices have remained very strong, if not excellent - you would expect that to drive up real estate prices,” Shimmin said. “If you look at the past 25 to 30 years, (farm land) has not been a very risky investment. Over the long term, it has had a pretty solid return.”

Is Ted Turner New Ag Secretary?

Now that was weird. If you watched the State of the Union — and really, why would you? — you might have wondered what the hell Ted Turner was doing in the front row of the Congressional chamber, rubbing elbows with our so-called president.

At least I thought Teddy Ranch Hand was sitting front and center.

Turns out that the look-alike was the brand-new U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer, the former governor of North Dakota. His first job is to iron on details of the five-year, $286-billion U.S. Farm Bill, which G.W. Bush has threatened to veto if it raises taxes or fails to end crop subsidies to the wealthiest Americans.

Here’s an excerpt on Schafer from the World Wide Agricultural Network.

“Schafer has had a lifelong interest in conservation and helped arrange the U.S. Forest Service’s May 2007 purchase of the 5,200 acre Elkhorn ranch in North Dakota. The site was where Theodore Roosevelt had his home and operated a cattle ranch in the 1880s. It is near the preserved town of Medora-the state’s leading tourist attraction,” according to a Associated Press report.

Western Land Sellers Freshen Up

We’re always interested in the established land sales brokers who’re making a solid effort keeping up with the times. As we’ve said many times before, the Web has offered rural land sellers an amazing opportunity to get their message out. And what better message is there than land listings in some of the most amazing settings?

Lately, we’ve been getting e-mail updates from Knipe, out of Boise, which has been selling and listing ranches and land in Idaho for 64 years. Their site shows them to be one of a growing number of veterans listers who’re making the entire northwestern region their domain.

The Home of the Free and the Brave(s)

Yeah, it’s Thanksgiving, so here we “all” are, ready to hack up the turkey in celebration of “our” good fortune here in America. Why do I feel a little uneasy?

Maybe it’s because we started to wonder what kind of “holiday” fare the native people at the Kah-Nee-Ta Lodge on the Warms Springs Reservation in central Oregon will be serving guests this weekend. Or how the Lummi will mark this national holiday, now that they have won a judgment for water rights? Or, in Massachusetts, how the spirit of Massasoit will be affected 400 years after he likely ensured the survival of the Plymouth colonists, not knowing the generally egregious sweep that the “colonists” would eventually make across this country, a cataclysmic land reassignment at the expense of its native inhabitants.

Yes, this is simpleton thinking. It’s OK to spend a day thankful for what we have, but it’s tough not to consider the costs.

Oregon A Model for Land-Use Planning

When Oregon voters last Tuesday approved Measure 49, a bill that will scale back a property compensation law passed three years earlier, they reinvigorated an important state-wide task force that will substantially review Oregon’s land-use system. The Big Look is back in business.

In a way, Oregon also resumed its status as role model for how states can comprehensively seek to serve the rights of private land owners AND conservationists. In fact, an examination of the state’s land-use policies is something both sides agree on.

There is a growing political will of voters to try and get things right on land-use matters. Last Tuesday, voters across the country approved $1.4 billion in funding for new measures in land conservation.

Add to that a growing awareness of the U.S. food supply and this might be the first time in history that the U.S. Farm Bill got so much mainstream press, including important insight from the likes of food culture essayist Michael Pollan.

Is there a grass-roots effort being put forth that might actually mean smart people might actually begin to have beneficial impact on this nation? Despite all the things going terribly wrong, there is an undercurrent of change attempting to bubble up to the surface. Not a moment too soon.

One of the worst things about the Iraq war, besides it’s illegality, violence and unending mess, is that serious attention to so many domestic issues has been hijacked. So few issues of serious consequence to the health and well-being of THIS country can gain any traction. Major media is obsessed with Hillary-Obama, Iraq is a political, military, economic and media quagmire.

But under the surface of all this noise and mess, topics of domestic concern are being dealt with on state and local levels. Creative thinkers are starting to assert — despite a White House that told Americans in the wake of 9/11 to go back to the shopping malls — that solutions to the problems associated with our shifting society are within our power to create.

Land use and resources are a major, underlying component to these new solutions. In fact, this is a shifting nation, only no one in “power” is willing to say it, or act on it. But look at this site out of Michigan called Modeshift.

It is an news and information site edited by a former New York Times journalist, Keith Schneider. In addition to dealing with Smart Growth issues, Modeshift (associated with the Michigan Land Use Institute) is a: “a new blog that chronicles accelerating transition in two arenas of American life: the economy and competitiveness of state and metropolitan regions, and the swift development of social media. The focus is new forms, new techniques, the new rules of the game in economic development and communications.”

Could it be that smart people who want to save our country from further rack and ruin are starting to make waves? Small waves can ripple into tidal shifts …

Oregon Voters Put Brakes on Sprawl

They were calling it a Ground War in Oregon.

Three years ago, Measure 37 was passed in Oregon and the floodgates of sprawl where opened.  Timber companies and other owners of rural land — including family farmers who were rightfully looking to protect or maximize their land assets — filed thousands of claims across the state, seeking the maximum number of houses in new subdivisions.

On Tuesday, Oregon voters made it a new ballgame.

Measure 49, which limits subdivision rights on undeveloped parcels, won’t end the (endless) debate on the rights of landowners. It will, however, mean Oregon won’t see the proliferation of housing subdivisions that have turned Phoenix and Las Vegas into housing development hell.

Weekend Land Sale in the WA. Palouse

We must be on some kind of mailing list. Look what popped up in the queue, just as we said we were trying to renounce our LandCrazed obsession! Red Tail Ridge is selling multi-acre home sites from $69K in Colfax, Washington.

The Palouse is just an amazing sight! Wheat fields rolling along like a grainy ocean … it is beautiful and could be attractive considering what’s happening in California and other coastal regions. As a fans of the vast expanse of Eastern Washington, we can’t help but think it will continue to be an attractive alternative, but not without concern for water resources.

Look here at the Colfax Chamber of Commerce site that talks about groundwater resources, agricultural needs for water, lack of irrigation and the increased protection needs with declining glaciers!

We’re going to have to do a more comprehensive look at water tables and resources for the inland Northwest, which is not exactly in the same water concern area as other parts of the West often talked about these days, particularly any states that are fed by the Colorado River.

BONUS: Cool website specific to The Inland Northwest, out of Spokane serving visitors to northern Idaho, eastern Washington and western Montana.

LandCrazed in a Strange Time

It’s been awhile since we’ve posted here. I don’t think we’re any less LandCrazed, however, these are CRAZY times. The entire world seems to be shifting and sifting itself out in a vaguely pre-catastrophic manner. From the real estate/mortgage crisis that should continue to plummet our (highly manipulated and unsteady) economy to global warming, this is a time when everyone is (or probably should be) considering their relationship to how we live, where we live and the FATE of all our land(s.)

Maybe that’s why we’ve hunkered down here in Seattle, where we have turned our macro-kind of love affair with land into a more concentrated “nesting/working” phase in order to really evaluate what the heck is going on out there.

Currently, we are more involved in a very, very local blog called The Bluffington Report.

In our reading about the fate of the planet, we must recommend this article (The Prophet of Climate) in the current edition of Rolling Stone magazine. It is a real eye-opener. The interview Dr. James Lovelock will rattle your skull.

He maintains that the tipping point for global catastrophe has already happened. In fact, Dr. Lovelock suggests that in as little 100 years, the rising seas (80 feet, no 20 as predicted by politically hand-strung and scared politicians who can’t say no to the World Bank) could cause massive deaths — upwards of billions — as the earth’s population is chaotically shifted.

Lovelock’s most fascinating suggestion? That the only safe places for future generation (down to 500 million from 7 billion!!) are the Yukon and Siberia and other currently cold interior places that will be hospitable to human habitation.

OK, folks. Off to speculate on land in interior Canada/Alaska. See ya!

Sounds Good: 40 Acres for $40K

They’ve been pushing land sale opportunities at Eagles Springs Ranch pretty hard here in Seattle lately. Radio ads for the high desert development 20 minutes from Moses Lake in Central Washington have been coming in loud and clear during our morning commutes.

We put a call into the developers to ask if they were having a tough time selling the lots, given the $1,000 an acre price and hearty sales pitch, but we’re told 117 parcels in 170-parcel first phase of the development have been sold, so scratch that theory.

There’s still plenty of land to go around out there in Eastern Washington, but there’s also no doubt that with places like Bend, Oregon becoming boom towns for Californians and others in search of the NEXT GREAT escape, central Washington is becoming an attractive alternative. Moses Lake ain’t no Bend, but, the location does put you in the middle of a giant outdoor playground, right there on the Columbia River; with alpine terrain about two hours north and Spokane/northern Idaho about three hours east.