The "unusual" behavior of agricultural land prices is the subject of
considerable debate and controversy and is the object of this research.
There is little doubt that land prices have been increasing steadily since
1959 and dramatically throughout the decade of the 1970's. However, there
is widespread disagreement among economists, appraisers, and other interested
parties as to the causes of the dramatic increases in land prices.
Net agricultural income is undoubtedly an important factor in the
agricultural land market. Yet, land prices have continued to increase in
the face of steady and even declining net incomes. Other factors often
considered as exerting considerable influences are inflation, pressures
from an increasing population, incentives to attain economies of size
through ranch enlargement, and capitalization of government farm program
"payments" into land values.
The objective of this research is to identify the factors that exert
significant influence on agricultural grazing land sale prices in two
Eastern Oregon counties and to assess the impact of changes in these factors
on the selling price of grazing land.
A single equation linear regression model is used to identify the
factors that have a significant impact on the price of grazing land. The
variables determined to be positively correlated to the price of grazing
land are the productivity of the land, the price of feeder cattle, inflation,
and the assessed value of real property included in the land sales.
The price of hay is negatively correlated with the price of grazing land.
The inclusion of public land (USFS and BLM) grazing privileges in the
sale was found to have no significant effect on the price of grazing land.
In addition, purchases for the purpose of ranch enlargement are occurring
at lower prices than purchases for ranch establishment.
The major limitations of this study are the restrictions placed on
the sales that are analyzed and the problem of standardizing a measure of
land productivity. The first limitation is defensible given the stated
objectives of the study and the need to limit the analysis to a roughly
homogeneous class of land sales. The latter limitation prohibits generalization
of the results to other areas without appropriate standardization
of the measure of land productivity. / Graduation date: 1979
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/26043 |
| Date | 07 May 1979 |
| Creators | Winter, John R. |
| Contributors | Whittaker, James K. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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