How Marketing Turned Two-State Farm Sale into Regional Event with Midwest Land Broker Johnny Klemme

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The size and the final price tag generated the headlines for a multi-generational property:

1,477.5 acres of farmland : $22.45 million.

But it is the marketing plan that generated the interest to make this sale happen. Johnny Klemme, Geswein Farm & Land Realty's Director of Auction Services, knew that a sale of this size would require a unique marketing approach to create enough interest, urgency, and competition to maximize the value for the sellers.

The farms stretched across Illinois and Indiana, and Klemme quickly realized the marketing strategy needed to be bigger than simply advertising a collection of individual tracts.

"When I have to put on my auctioneer cap," Klemme told American Farmland Owner, "my job is, how do I maximize value, and how do we do this to the best of our ability?"

Johnny Klemme bio:

Geswein Farm & Land Realty, Co-Owner, Advisor, Broker, & Auctioneer

K.L. Security Enterprises, Co-Founder

"American Family Farmland", Author

The property, Klemme knew, would draw interest from various parties. The Illinois tracts, aside from their productive farmland traits, would benefit from proximity to the south Chicago metropolitan area. And the Indiana property would hold appeal to those looking at its Lake County locations near Crown Point, Lowell, and Hebron and see long-term potential in agricultural production.

Klemme decided that he would lean on experience, but not just his nearly 17 years in the land industry. He consulted mentors in the auction business and fellow graduates of the Certified Auctioneers Institute, an executive education program offered through the National Auction Association.

One of the questions was how to structure the auction itself. A traditional large-scale auction can create a problem. Too much time can mean too much fatigue.

"You don't want people to get tired. You don't want people to get bored," Klemme said. "We call that 'buyer fatigue.'"

The solution was to resist the temptation to treat the entire 1,477.5 acres as one giant auction while simultaneously marketing it as something much larger than a collection of individual farms.

"We needed each state to sort of stand on its own merit," Klemme said. "But then from the marketing side, we branded it as this larger regional event."

How Do You Sell Farmland to an Entire Region?

That distinction mattered. The Illinois farms could attract buyers interested specifically in Illinois farmland. The Indiana farms could do the same. But bringing the properties together under one regional marketing umbrella created a bigger story: nearly 1,500 acres being offered in a single two-day event.

The result was momentum. It generated more attention, more headlines and, ultimately, nearly 800 bids.

Why Choose a Hybrid Auction Format?

Klemme also chose a hybrid auction format, combining an in-person live auction with online bidding.

"I love hybrid formats," he said. "It's not for every farm or for every property."

But for an asset "of this class, this size, this scope," Klemme said it was important to have people physically in the room while also allowing buyers to participate online.

The strategy was tested by the reality of the auction room.

Geswein has conducted live auctions where online bidders ultimately dominated the bidding. That wasn't what happened this time.

"This was a different beast," Klemme said.

The room was so aggressive that relatively few online bidders actually placed bids. That competition didn't happen by accident.

On the Illinois side, the marketing team emphasized the fundamentals that farmland buyers understood: strong soils, verified yield histories, good locations, paved-road frontage, and well-maintained farms.

But Klemme said there was another important element: the tenants. The tenants had farmed the land for years and were available to answer questions in the room.

"When you take any farm to market, whether it's an auction or a listing, and you've got the ability to demonstrate years of stewardship, years of quality management, you know, verified yield history, and you got the guy in the room who's really proud of all the work that he's done, that changes the context of how buyers view that," Klemme said.

The same approach worked in Indiana, where buyers could hear directly about the farms, their yields, and their management history.

What Drove the Farmland Auction Price Higher?

Then there was another ingredient every auctioneer wants: competing buyers pursuing the same land.

Some wanted the farms for similar reasons. Others had entirely different objectives. But the common denominator was scarcity.

"The land is tightly held, it doesn't come up very often, and we are right in the path of progress," Klemme said.

That last point also connected the marketing of the farms to their history. The land had been owned for multiple generations by Phil Rietveld, who had accumulated and invested in the farms over decades.

Klemme did not know Rietveld personally. But through conversations with Rietveld's children and advisers, he began to understand that the characteristics attracting buyers in 2026 were the same characteristics Rietveld had recognized decades earlier.

"It was almost as if his vision, you know, 30 years ago was coming to life," Klemme said.

That is perhaps the biggest lesson from the sale.

Marketing farmland isn't simply about getting an advertisement in front of as many people as possible. It is about identifying the characteristics that make a property valuable, finding the buyers who understand those characteristics, and then creating an environment where those buyers compete.

In this case, Klemme used a two-state property portfolio to create a regional story, featured a hybrid auction to broaden participation, showcased tenants and farm records to demonstrate stewardship, and demonstrated an aggressive live event to turn interest into competition.

The $22.45 million result was the final number.

But getting there required something more fundamental: convincing enough qualified buyers that they were looking at an opportunity they might not see again anytime soon.