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Abstract
Farmland values are influenced by
productivity levels, prices of pertinent
crops, farm incomes, urban sprawl, and
external investment pressure. Since
cropping systems in a given region are
similar to adjacent regions and soil
productivity indexes change slowly across
regions, it was expected that farmland
values are spatially clustered even at the
state level. We tested spatial correlation
on US state-level farmland values
from 1950 to 2014. Spatial correlation
was detected in farmland values and
percent changes in farmland values.
These results indicate that traditional
analysis techniques that ignore values of
neighboring states may be dominated
by advanced spatial analysis. Evaluation
of state-level farmland values provide
appraisers with insights into how a
shock to farmland values impact values
in surrounding states. Future analyses
will validate these results by examining
available sub-state and county-level data.