Going aganist the grain -mthat's what land prices are doing.

The Dow crashes, history is made on Wall Street...yet land is worth more than it's ever been.

Many people are searching for a safe investment and no doubt some of that cash stored away in the stockmarket-is being taken out and put in the groundpushing land prices to the extreme.

I visited with an Agriculture lender, a seller and a local agriculture instructorhere is what they had to say.

(Kevin Pifer / Pifer Land Auctions) "I think land prices are going to continue to go up."


(Mark Holkup / Bismarck-state-college " class="kxInlineLink">BSC Ag. Instructor) "I think it could continue to go up for awhile yet."

Rod Anheluk / BND Ag. Lender) "I don't know if we have peaked."


But who are the ones willing to pay the price tag on some of this ground?

No doubt, recreational buyers and investors want it and are pushing the marketbut one force needs it.

(Rod Anheluk / BND Ag. Investor) "By and large I think that farmers are still the biggest market out there for land sales. And of course, if the land comes up for sale across the road and you have been farming it for the last 10, 20 years, you are going to want to buy it."


In 1999 the average crop land value was $440 dollars an acre.

Today that number sounds like a bargain.

So far in 2008 values have jumped to 800 dollars an acre.

That figure is just skimming the surface when it comes to pricing good cropland.

(Kevin Pifer/ Pifers Auctions) "It is going to range anywhere in price from 8, 9 hundred dollars an acre to 35 hundred dollars an acre if you are in the Valley."

At the land auction we attended cropland in the Washburn area sold for between 15 and 16 hundred dollars an acre.

But have producers bid themselves to the point of no return?

(Sarah Gustin / Rod Anheluk) "I feel like we are bidding the profit out of this land. YES."


(Sarah Gustin / Mark Holkup) "Have farmers gotten to the point where we are paying too much and we are just taking the profit out of what we are doing? In some cases yeah."


(Rod Anheluk / BND Ag. Investor) "Right now the land won't service the debt. They have to subsidize the land at these higher prices and that is not totally unusal. But they probably have to subsidize it more with their other land than they would normally would have had to do in the past."


Now the question many buyers and sellers are askingWhat lies ahead.?

(Mark Holkup / BSC Instructor) "I think it could continue to go up for awhile yet. But at some point we have got to get back, you know the base value of land is set by what it will produce and productivity. And as commodity prices rise and fall, that affects that productivity of that land. And boy we can only pay so much and we can only get so much of it based on the price."


But one thing is for certain

(Rod Anheluk / BND Ag. Lender) "You know, you need land to operate and anymore you need more to operate. You have to spread your costs over more acres, via pasture or cropland."


And that push for acres, might be enough to keep our land prices peaking.

In Bismarck, Reporting for KX News, I am Sarah Gustin.



We checked into some land values in the far western part of the state.



Some cropland near Regent was selling for as much as 900 dollars an acre. watch the video | save this article / add to your favorites list