By TIM ALEXANDER
Illinois Correspondent

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Nine thousand Illinois farmers who indicated they pay cash rent for their cropland received in their mail the first-ever Illinois Cash Rent Study, conducted by the Illinois Field Office of the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), in late September.

The survey seeks to define how much cash rent is paid on a county-by-county basis, and for how many total acres. The answers will help determine the condition of rented land throughout all of Illinois’ 102 counties, according to Ashley Hopp, an Illinois USDA statistician who is leading the study.

“The survey results will help USDA in setting our CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) levels and disaster program levels,” Hopp said. “In addition, it will give both landlords and renters within counties an opportunity to compare what they are paying or getting for land with others in the county.”

The survey results, which will be analyzed along with rent information provided by other farmers in various quarterly surveys, will give producers and landlords their first definitive glimpse at the “state of the state” concerning cash rent.

“We had asked producers about cash rent in our June area survey, but never published anything on a county level, which is the goal of the survey,” said Hopp. “We’re gathering information from as many sources as we can. We pulled the (farmers surveyed) from those who had reported on the Ag Census that they had rent expenses.”
The survey will become a yearly occurrence mandated by the new farm bill, according to Hopp. The results will be published at the county level in early April 2009.

“We’re going blind into this survey with hardly any expectations” regarding average rent amounts in Illinois, she said.

USDA’s recent Land Values and Cash Rents report, however, estimated the value of rented cropland in Illinois for 2008 at $160 per acre, or $40 per acre for pasture. With farm real estate values soaring an estimated 15.5 percent to $5,000 per acre this year, according to the report, many experts are predicting even higher cash rents for 2009.

All information provided by respondents for the survey is held confidential by law, according to NASS Illinois Field Office director Brad Schwab.

“NASS safeguards the confidentiality of all responses, ensuring that no individual operation or producer can be identified,” he stated. All NASS reports are available on its website, www.nass.usda.gov
For more information on the cash rent survey or other NASS reports, contact the Illinois Field Office at 800-622-9865.