Schrader Real Estate & Auction Company will manage the sale of the 48 tracts, which total some 2,900 tillable acres. “It’s possible that we will have some large investors seeking to purchase substantial amounts of land, but local farmers and investors seeking 100 acres or less will have an equal chance to buy the land they want,” says R.D. Schrader.

Located five miles east of Rockford, the tracts range in size from 2± acres to more than 200 acres and will be available for the 2012 crop year.

Date: 10:00 a.m. central time, November 19, 2011

Location: Community Building Complex of Boone County
111 W. 1st Street, Belvidere, Illinois 61008
Phone: (815) 547-3928

For more information:
Schrader Real Estate & Auction Company
(800) 451-2709
www.SchraderAuction.com

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Agricultural land values in the Seventh Federal Reserve District jumped 12% in 2010, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The district encompasses key portions of America’s Corn Belt, including Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The increase was the second largest on record over the last three decades and was greatest in Iowa, where values soared a whopping 18 percent.

According to the Chicago Fed’s newsletter, “Slightly more than half of the respondents expected farmland values to keep rising during the January through March period of 2011.”

Read the Chicago Fed’s AgLetter HERE.

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Duke Energy has become the lead investor in GreenTrees, a privately managed forest restoration program created and managed by C2I for landowners in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley: Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

This enormous valley once held 24.7 million acres of forest and emergent wetlands. Today more than 18 million acres – or 80 percent – has been cleared, resulting in the loss of critical natural habitat.

The program is expected to generate high-quality, verifiable carbon offsets that Duke believes will help reduce the overall cost of compliance with federal climate change legislation. Duke’s initial investment will result in the planting of more than 1 million trees on approximately 1,700 acres in Arkansas.

GreenTrees is designed to create, enhance, and sustain conservation and wildlife benefits from afforestation. GreenTrees provides landowners the most economic and environmental value for each acre of trees planted. The program utilizes a specific inter-planting of 302 cottonwoods plus 302 mixed hardwoods per acre. The specific design of 302/302 delivers more conservation value, more carbon, and better sustainable hardwood revenues than a previous design of 302 cottonwood and 151 hardwoods.

In exchange for the landowners’ long-term lease to prevent reversibility, GreenTrees offers a variety of short and long-term income opportunities. Landowners can simultaneously enroll the same qualified acres into GreenTrees, CRP, and other conservation practices, thus receiving multiple financial incentives and incomes together.

GreenTrees was founded by Izaak Walton League of America board member Carey Crane and Texaco Chevron Conservation Award recipient Chandler Van Voorhis. Both men have received great inspiration from Crane’s mother, Maggie Bryant. Bryant is a past-two term Chairperson of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and retired from her board position in 2001. She has been awarded the prestigious Chevron Conservation Award as well as the Governor’s Award for Conservation in Mississippi, and she continues to be active in conservation measures around the world.

Landowners are enthusiastic about GreenTrees. Arkansas landowner Brandon Stafford is a recent enrollee. Stafford found himself with 210 acres of un-irrigated farmland that he had to do something with. He enrolled it in CRP and GreenTrees. After the initial planting and subsequent sprayings Brandon says, “It’s amazing what the trees are doing.” The CRP and GreenTrees programs work in concert for him. Currently over 2,500 acres from 20 landowners are enrolled in the program.

To learn more about GreenTrees, visit their website: www.green-trees.com.

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Update: The complete tract of land went unsold during the brief auction. The first tract at 50 acres was passed on at $120,000, the second tract at 40 acres was unsold at $96,000, and the third tract at 80 acres was unsold at $192,000. A combination of all three tracts was passed on as well.

170 acres, broken up into three tracts of 50, 40 and 80 acres, goes on the block Saturday in Marion County, IL. The land can be used both for hunting and CRP income. Buy A Farm Land and Auction Co. will host the bidding.

The minimum opening bids on the property start at $2,400 an acre.

Located on Blackburn Road, 15 minutes from I-57 in Centralia, the property could be a solid buy if you happened to scoop up all three parcels. Each has a decent CRP income; they total about $6,500 per year. According to the listing, deer abound on the property.

This would make a nice long weekend retreat for hunters in St. Louis or Chicago.

Bids will be taken at the Iuka Grade School or online. 10% down is required at the end of the auction with the balance at closing.

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The sale, which was conducted by Aumann Auctions, featured property in parts of four townships in Macoupin and Montgomery  counties. According to local news reports, it was considered one of the largest in Central Illinois in the last few years and averaged $6,255 per acre.

More complete details are available through the auctioneer’s website.

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By Gene Koprowski
 
According to a survey released last week by the Illinois Society of Professional Managers and Rural Appraisers, and the University of Illinois, and released by the Illinois Farm Bureau, farmland values have increased by 5.9 percent since January of 2007. Land sold for $9,900 per acre for “excellent quality farm property” during the first two quarters, while the same kind of land sold for slightly more than $5,000 in central Illinois, the survey said.

Only 36 percent of rural properties sold here moved for tax exchange purposes – so called “1031 exchange” properties. Under the federal tax code, section 1031, landowners can swap land with other rural landowners, and defer taxes until later.  The percentage of transactions linked to the tax break is down dramatically from 2005, when 56 percent of farmland properties that were turned over for tax purposes, according to the society’s study.

Those surveyed by the society – owners of farmland throughout this Midwestern state, who are also members of the Illinois Society of Professional Managers and Rural Appraisers  – told researchers that they expect property prices to continue to increase through the rest of the year.

“Near-term troubles in the credit and housing markets notwithstanding, the U.S. population is putting us on the verge of a looming ‘asset shortage’ and significant inflation,” said Jason Hartman, president of Platinum Properties Investor Network, a financial services firm with 10,000 members, which does business in 33 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) across the U.S. “That’s good news for real estate owners.”

Hartman said that there is a long-term “prosperity boom” that is changing the real estate investing game forever.  “This will put upward pressure on prices of farmland,” said Hartman, who is based in Newport Beach, Calif.

Another real estate investor, Gene Curtis,  the broker/owner of RE/MAX Unified Brokers in Macomb, Ill., told LandReport.com, that “price is not a concern for a lot of the people I deal with” on rural land transactions. “Developers are purchasing the land.”

In downstate Illinois, where Curtis runs his business, another factor that is driving sales is the interest in big agribusiness in cultivating lands for ethanol production. Smaller farmers, whose costs in seed, fertilizer, and other inputs, continue to rise, are selling land to the agribusiness companies.

“In the next year or two, there could be some more shakeouts there,” said Curtis.

The study by the society supported this theory. “Commodity prices caused by new bio-fuel demands have led to renewed interest in farmland among farmers in the last half of 2006,” according to the new study. “This has helped renew growth in farmland prices.”

Some rural property managers here surveyed by the society are, however, worried that “farmland prices may have reached their peak,” according to the survey.

Cash rents increased to $191 per acre and are expected to continue to grow, reaching at least $212 per acre next year. That will be $43 above 2006 levels, according to the survey.

Interestingly, the overall volume of farmland sold has decreased, slightly, during the first six months of this year, and the volume of land sold is expected to remain steady throughout the rest of the year, according to the study, the Mid-Year Survey.

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