A recent report from Iowa State University found the average price for an acre of Iowa farmland hit a new record high in 2012. The price was just short of 83-hundred dollars, an increase of 24-percent from the year before. Doug Stark, president of Farm Credit Services of America, says obtaining farmland is the single biggest issue facing new farmers. “It’s that they need to find access to land to be able to farm,” Stark says. “It’s so competitive out there right now, with people buying land and with successful producers that are bidding up the price of rented land, it’s very challenging for young producers just to get the base of operation through land to get their operations started.”

Stark says with advances in technology, farmers today have a bit more down time for family and other activities, something relatively new in the world of agriculture. That’s making it more appealing for young people to pick farming as a career path.  “I think we’re seeing more young people wanting to come back to farming now than we’ve seen in a long, long time,” Stark says. “They know they can come back to the farm and not only have it be a way of life, but that they can they can have a life.”

The challenge of finding land to farm remains, it part due to record corn and bean prices as well as low interest rates.

(Radio Iowa)

The Cass County Board of Supervisors have approved a resolution pertaining to the construction of livestock confinement facilities within the County. The move came during the Board’s meeting Monday morning, in Atlantic. Auditor Dale Sunderman said it’s the same thing the board approved last year and in previous years, with the exception of the dates. Sunderman says basically if a person has plans to construct a livestock facility and a permit is required, the application must be reviewed by the Board. The Supervisors will evaluate the application using the Master Matrix created by Iowa Code.

The Board’s recommendation to the Iowa DNR may be based on the final score on the Master Matrix or on reasons other than the final score.

Jim Field speaks with Kate Olson, Program Coordinator for ISU Extension in Cass County, about the Master Gardner program that begins Jan. 15, 2013 in Atlantic.

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MISSOURI VALLEY, Iowa (AP) – A juvenile bald eagle that had suffered a broken wing and other injuries in south-central Nebraska will be released at the DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge that sits in both western Iowa and eastern Nebraska.  The Daily Nonpareil newspaper says Raptor Recovery Nebraska’s chapter in Omaha expects to free the bird between noon and 1 p.m. Saturday, near the visitor center.

The refuge straddles the Missouri River north of Omaha, sitting between Blair, Neb., to the west and Missouri Valley, Iowa, to the east.  Denise Lewis, of Raptor Recovery, says the female was found injured in the Grand Island, Neb., area. Lewis says the broken wing and soft-tissue injuries may have resulted from the bird flying into something or being grazed by a vehicle while feeding near a road.

Some Iowa farmers had a very rough 2012 due to the drought and it’ll translate to a more expensive 2013 for consumers. A report from the U-S Department of Agriculture predicts food prices will be rising in the months ahead. U-S-D-A economist Ricky Volpe says the big hike in livestock feed prices means beef, pork and chicken will cost more.  “We’re going to see strong food price inflation for a lot of animal-based products,” Volpe says. “That’s expected to happen relatively early in the year, in the first quarter or the first half of 2013.” Food prices rose about two-and-a-half percent this year and the agency predicts they’ll rise three-to-four percent in the year ahead.

Volpe says meat prices will go up initially, with many other items costing more by late summer.  “That’s when we can expect to see more significant impacts for all these more packaged, processed, shelf-stabled foods, things like soups, condiments and side dishes, and then even things like breakfast cereals and packaged breads,” Volpe says. “That’s where we’ll start to see the impacts of the drought happen a little bit later. Consumers are going to feel it more for those foods. It’ll be a little bit smaller but it will happen in the second half of 2013 and maybe even in 2014.”

Volpe says the effects of the summer-long drought will continue to have ripple effects in all grocery aisles. “We’ve seen, in the last couple of months, fluid milk prices ticking up,” Volpe says. “It does appear as if, for this food, the drought has really started to hit it. We always expected that fluid milk and dairy would be kind of a good bellwether of where the drought is headed because we’re looking at a food group that is not very storable and doesn’t require a lot of processing. Expect to see dairy products, this large category, on average go up about 4% in 2013 as a result of these higher feed prices.” The report says the price of milk and other dairy products could double if price supports are not addressed by Congress in a new Farm Bill by the end of the year.

(Radio Iowa)