Farmland Cash Rent — 2025 NASS Averages

All 48 published states shown — pulled directly from USDA NASS QuickStats (2025 Cash Rents survey, August 2025 estimates; retrieved July 19, 2026). "—" means NASS did not publish a 2025 estimate for that category (small irrigated acreage, limited pasture rental market, or data-quality suppression). Alaska and Rhode Island have no published 2025 cash-rent estimates. Heads-up when comparing against news coverage: widely quoted figures like "U.S. cropland $161" or "Nebraska $226" are all-cropland averages (irrigated + dryland blended) — this table separates the two, which is why some numbers differ from headlines. County-level detail: NASS county releases (e.g., NE, KS, SD, TX).

What the NASS cash rent survey actually measures

The figures above are survey estimates of rent that was genuinely paid on working leases — not asking prices, not listings, and not appraised values. Each year USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service gathers that information and publishes averages by state for three categories that behave like separate markets: non-irrigated cropland, irrigated cropland, and pasture. Where the sample in a county is deep enough, NASS also publishes county estimates, and those land in late August alongside the state release. Where the sample is too thin, or an acreage category barely exists locally, nothing is published at all. That is why several cells in the table carry a dash instead of a number, and why a handful of states are available only at the state level.

Two consequences matter for you. First, a published average looks backward. It describes agreements struck before the questionnaire went out, so in a year when grain prices, cattle markets or input costs swing hard, the survey trails the conversation you are actually having across the kitchen table. Second, an average is one point squeezed out of a distribution that can be extremely wide. Some of the leases inside that average were signed well beneath it and some well above it, and the published figure discloses nothing about how far the tails stretch in your particular township.

What the table above actually says once you add it up

Most pages that reproduce this survey stop at the table. It is worth spending five minutes on the shape of the numbers, because the shape contains a warning that the headline figure hides. Everything in this section is arithmetic performed on the table above — nothing new is imported.

Start with the national non-irrigated cropland figure of $147. Of the 46 states with a published non-irrigated cropland rent, 36 of them — 78 percent — sit below it. Seventeen sit below half of it. The median state is $82.50, which is about 56 percent of the national number. Only ten states are at or above the national average: Missouri, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Nebraska, Ohio, Hawaii, Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa. Quartile to quartile the states run $55.00 to $137.75, and end to end they run $16.00 in Wyoming to $274.00 in Iowa — a factor of 17.

The reason is not a mistake in the survey. A national figure is weighted by acres, not by states: the acres get the vote, and a very large share of the rented non-irrigated cropland acres in this country sit in a handful of Corn Belt states. The $147 is an honest answer to the question "what does a rented acre cost, on average, in the United States." It is a badly misleading answer to the question "is my rent normal," because for most of the country the typical acre is nowhere near it.

Now do the same thing to pasture, and the bias flips direction. The national pasture figure is $15.50. The median state is $25.00 — and 33 of the 45 published states are above the national average, not below it. Same mechanism, opposite sign: pasture acres are concentrated in the arid West, where a rented acre carries very little grass and rents accordingly. Wyoming, New Mexico, Montana and Texas contribute enormous acreage at very low per-acre rates and pull the weighted national figure down below almost every individual state. End to end, pasture runs $1.90 in Arizona to $65.00 in Iowa, a spread of 34 times — wider in relative terms than cropland.

This is the single most useful thing to take away from the table: the national average is biased upward for cropland and downward for pasture, for exactly the same reason. If someone quotes you a national number in a lease conversation, the question to ask is not whether it is accurate — it is. The question is which acres it is describing.

What the irrigated column is really pricing

Forty-two states publish both a non-irrigated and an irrigated cropland rent, so the ratio between them can be read directly. The median state pays about 1.97 times as much for irrigated ground as for dryland — call it double. But the median conceals almost everything interesting, because the ratio ranges from 0.97 to 12.07.

At the bottom sits Iowa, the only state in the survey where irrigated cropland rents for less than non-irrigated: $267 against $274. Illinois is barely different at 1.03, and Minnesota, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina and Missouri all come in under 1.5. At the top, California pays 12.07 times more for irrigated ground, New Mexico 8.22 and Washington 5.80. Eleven states price irrigation at three times dryland or more.

The pattern is not about the pumps. Irrigation is priced as the difference between land that produces a crop without water and land that produces essentially nothing without it. In Iowa, rain does most of the work already, so a pivot buys you insurance against a dry August and very little else — which is why the market barely pays for it, and why in one state it prices as a slight nuisance. In California and New Mexico, the dryland column is describing ground that cannot grow a row crop at all, so the ratio is not a premium for a convenience; it is close to the entire value of the land. Read that way, a high irrigation ratio in the table is a statement about how bad the local rainfall is, not about how good the equipment is.

The practical consequence for a lease: an irrigation premium copied from another state is meaningless. If you are negotiating irrigated ground, the number that matters is your own state's gap between the two columns, and whether the water right behind the pivot is as secure as the acres in the survey were.

Why the county average is a starting point, not a fair price

A county average answers a question about a county. Your question is about one field, and no field is average. The county figure blends bottom ground and hillsides, tiled quarters and wet pockets, big square blocks and odd triangles behind a creek. It is the correct place to begin a negotiation because both parties can look it up for free and neither can accuse the other of inventing it. It is the wrong place to end one, because it has already averaged away every distinguishing feature of the acres in question.

Treat the county number as the anchor and then argue, out loud and with evidence, about the direction and size of the adjustment. That is what the low and high percentages in the calculator are for. Canned adjustment factors pretend to a precision nobody has, and some of what you would adjust for is already folded into the county figure.

The parcel facts that pull a field off the average

Productivity dominates. A soil productivity or corn-suitability rating from your county soil survey is the single most defensible number either side can bring, because it is public, parcel-specific and hard to dispute. Drainage is second: functioning tile, or its absence, changes both expected yield and the number of days a planter can run. Field size and shape matter more than people outside the tractor cab expect — point rows, tight headlands, buried obstacles and scattered small tracts all raise the cost per acre of covering the ground with modern equipment. Road access determines whether grain trucks and sprayers can reach the field in wet conditions or must detour. Distance from the operator's base is real money in fuel, road time and machinery hours, which is why a neighbor whose shop sits half a mile away can rationally outbid an operator forty minutes out.

Who pays for what

Two leases at identical dollars per acre are not equal deals if the responsibilities differ. Settle in writing who buys and applies lime, who funds phosphorus and potassium build-up as opposed to maintenance fertility, who repairs fence and maintains livestock water on pasture, who cleans ditches and fixes broken tile, who controls noxious weeds, who carries insurance, and who keeps hunting rights (retained or included, that changes real value — see our hunting lease page). A tenant asked to build fertility on ground held under a one-year handshake will bid lower, and should.

Cash rent versus flexible and share arrangements

Fixed cash rent is a transfer of risk. The landowner receives a known amount regardless of drought, hail or a collapse in prices, and the tenant absorbs every bit of that uncertainty in exchange for keeping the upside of a good year. Its virtue is simplicity; its weakness is that it can feel badly wrong to one party in any unusual season.

A crop share splits both production and, usually, some inputs by an agreed fraction, so the two parties move together instead of against each other. A flexible lease sits between the extremes: a guaranteed base rent, plus an additional payment triggered by a written formula tied to actual yield, price, or both. Flexible arrangements defuse the argument about who guessed the market correctly, but they demand more trust, honest records, and a formula written plainly enough that neither side can reinterpret it in December.

The same number reads differently from each side

If you own the ground, rent is the return on an asset you could sell or farm yourself, and your priorities are stability, a tenant who limes and controls erosion, and a rate that keeps pace over a long relationship. If you farm the ground, rent is typically the largest single cost per acre and it is fixed before you know a thing about the year ahead; your priority is a rate your realistic budget can service in a mediocre season, not a triumphant one.

Both readings are legitimate, and the productive conversation is usually about terms rather than the headline rate. Length of agreement, notice period, payment timing, improvement credits and a defined process for annual review are often worth more to each party than the last few dollars per acre either could win by grinding.

What this tool cannot tell you

It cannot value your farm, and nothing here is an appraisal, an offer, or legal, tax or investment advice. It does not know your soils, your drainage, your yield history, your landlord's tax situation, or what the operator down the road is prepared to bid to keep his equipment busy. It does not track land values, interest rates or property taxes, all of which shape what an owner needs. It cannot see local competition, which in a tight neighborhood overwhelms every adjustment discussed above.

Use it as a planning estimate to frame a conversation and pressure-test a budget. Pull the current county release for your area, walk the field, and remember that a signed lease is a binding legal document — have an attorney licensed in the property's state review anything material before you put your name on it.

Timing note for negotiations: NASS releases fresh cash rent data every late August. If you are negotiating a fall lease, the new county numbers arrive right when you need them.