From farmdoc daily: The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) recently released state and county rents for 2023. The Illinois Society of Professional Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers released their projections of 2024 rents on professionally managed farmland. Overall, cash rents increased from 2022 to 2023. Results from the Illinois Society survey suggest that cash rents may decline slightly from 2023 to 2024.
Cash rents vary across Illinois, as illustrated in Figure 2, which shows average county cash rents for non-irrigated cropland released by NASS on August 27. This year, NASS did not report cash rents for some major agricultural counties in Illinois. In Figure 2, rents for unreported counties were estimated based on a regression analysis, discussed below, relating rent levels to a county-level soil productivity index with agricultural district adjustment factors.
As is typical, cash rents are the highest in the central part of the state while cash rents are lower in southern Illinois. The highest reported average cash rent for 2023 is $367 per acre for Moultrie County. The second highest average rent is $362 for Piatt County. Moultrie and Piatt are adjacent counties in central Illinois and tied for the highest cash rent levels in Illinois in 2022 ($331 per acre). The lowest cash rent reported for 2023 is $58 per acre in Johnson County, a county in southern Illinois which also had the lowest rent reported for 2022 ($53 per acre). See farmdoc daily from September 13, 2022 for last year’s average cash rent analysis.