Tyson Foods’ decision last month to shut down one of its largest beef-processing plants in Lexington, Nebraska, has organizations scrambling to support the thousands of employees who will soon be out of work and cattle ranchers wondering what is ahead. The company is the nation’s largest meat supplier. It plans to close the 3,000-employee facility—which can process nearly 5,000 head of cattle per day—in January. The shutdown comes as an historic cattle shortage continues to squeeze...

Every quarter, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago releases its findings on land values for the states of Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. Its latest report released last week shows a modest increase of 3% in values for the area overall compared to the same time last year. This 3% gain matches the amount recorded in 2024. The Bank sends out a survey to district agricultural bankers each quarter to measure the temperature of the farming economy. This latest compilation was...

A new chapter in Iowa’s biomanufacturing story is officially underway. Earlier this month, BioMADE, state leaders, and Iowa State University celebrated the groundbreaking of a pilot-scale bioindustrial manufacturing facility near Ames. The $40 million project, set to open in 2027, is expected to produce everything from national defense products to consumer goods like fabrics and detergents. The company and state leaders say it will boost Iowa’s rural economy and at the same time, give...

Jon Kinzenbaw has been a tractor guy for most of his life. The founder and CEO of Kinze Manufacturing in Williamsburg, Iowa, has a lot of them in his personal collection — more than 600, to be precise. But he decided it was time to let some of them go. On November 4, Kinzenbaw held a long-awaited auction, handled by Sullivan Auctioneers, a BigIron company, marking the first time he had ever sold part of his collection. The tractors up for grabs were mostly duplicates, but that didn’t stop...

A new report predicts an increase in net income for farmers in the state of Missouri. This is some good news in a year filled with economic challenges like low commodity prices and tariff uncertainty with key countries like China.  The Missouri Farm Income Outlook  is released twice a year by the Rural and Farm Finance Policy Analysis Center (RaFF) at the University of Missouri. The latest report, out earlier this week, showed income should rise by 58%. That’s noticeably higher than The...

When a 150-year-old farm in west-central Indiana went up for auction this September, there were a couple of things that made it stand out from the typical properties in the Midwest. First, the land had been in the same family since just after the Civil War — a rare legacy in the farming community. But it was the second detail that surprised the realtor handling the sale. “They had created a reverse irrigation or subsurface irrigation system. I’ve never sold a farm with that before — it was a...

A 110.82-acre farm in northwest Indiana recently sold at auction, and the results surprised even the seasoned realtor handling the sale....

Farmland values in Iowa decreased slightly over the past six months, according to the latest Land Trends and Values Survey   released by...

(Alice Hansen Farm in Prole, Iowa. Photo courtesy: Peoples Company.) Just 20 minutes from downtown Des Moines, Iowa, a rare and storied...

John Giebenhain is a  LandProz agent  who primarily sells agricultural and recreational land through Central and West Central Minnesota....

The Great Western Ranch, a massive property on the west edge of New Mexico, has been sold to new owners. It is one of the largest single...

U.S. farmland values climbed again this year, marking the fifth consecutive annual increase, according to the USDA’s newly released 2025...