By Dar Danielson (Radio Iowa)

Survey information released from the U.S.D.A. shows a big increase in farmland values and cash rent. Iowa State University livestock economist, Lee Schulz, says the cropland increased 19.7%.

“And that’s the highest that we’ve seen since 2011 and 2012. When you look at pasture land values, they’re up a little over nine percent,” he says. Schulz says this is one set of numbers in the overall picture. “I would put this as, as one data point, you know, among many, when we look at, you know, understanding what farmland values and cash trends are Iowa State, for example, does surveys have both values and rents,” he says, “there’s the Federal Reserve Bank, and those branches do those. So, you know, I think it’s important always to take all the information available.”

He says high commodity prices are one of the big drivers of land values. “You know as we look at what you can make off that ground — certainly looking at corn and soybean prices. Also remember that interest rates have been really historically low, now we’re starting to see those increase at those low interest rates, all else equal, that helps support land values,” he says.

Schulz specializes in livestock and says that industry is having an impact on pasture land values. “I think it maybe doesn’t get necessarily the attention that the cropland values do. But pasture land is very much going to follow the cattle cycle. And so as we look at the downturn of the cattle inventory, and we’re starting to see higher prices and expectation of higher prices for cattle in the years to come, that’s certainly going to be supportive of pasture land values,” Schulz says.

He says as the commodity prices rise there’s competition for that land. The Fed Reserve recently raised interest rates again and Schulz says that is going to continue to impact land values along with the other factors. “It’s setting up to be a very dynamic market, on what we’ll see these land values do in the year and years to come,” Schulz says. Iowa State releases its annual land value survey in December.

By O. Kay Henderson (Radio Iowa)

With six weeks remaining in the 2022 campaign, Iowa Republicans have about a 4.5% statewide voter registration edge over Democrats.

“Way back in 2008, the Democrats had an advantage of about 108,000 registrations and now we’re down 87,000 and that’s just a massive difference,” says Jeff Link, a consultant who’s worked for a number of Democratic candidates, including Fred Hubbell, the party’s nominee for governor in 2018.

Iowa GOP chairman Jeff Kaufmann says a big turning point was in 2020, right after the Iowa Democratic Party’s presidential Caucuses.

“We just assumed there would be a bump in Democratic voter registration,” Kaufmann says. “That never happened. In fact, the gap continued to widen and it hasn’t stopped since.”

For years, independents were the largest voting block in Iowa. Flip back to the last midterm election, in 2018, and 36% of all active registered voters were independents. Link says having independents shrink from being the largest to the smallest block of voters in Iowa is significant.

“It just really shows that things are more polarized than ever,” Link says. “You know, when you’re the smaller party, that’s not good. You want it to be less polarized, so having a big number of independents, I think, is healthy for the state.”

Kaufmann says he intends for the GOP to keep its “foot on the pedal” and seek out new voters.

“I think the most irresponsible thing that I could do as a chair is assume that this is permanent and assume that this will continue on its own,” Kaufmann says. “I don’t believe that. I think Iowa is always going to have swing state tendencies. We have for the last century.”

As of September 1, 2022, there were a total of 1,859,224 active registered voters in Iowa.