Mike Walsten

Mike Walsten has covered major business trends in agriculture for more than 35 years. From the southern corn leaf blight of 1970 to today’'s biofuels focus, he’'s lived, reported and analyzed the impact of volatile markets on farm and ranch businesses and on land prices. After growing up on a grain and livestock farm in Western Illinois, Mike graduated from the University of Illinois with an undergraduate degree in agriculture communications and a master’'s degree in business administration in the early 1970s. Since then he’'s covered business and management issues as well as price outlook and marketing issues in various positions with Farm Journal Magazine and Professional Farmers of America. He now applies his extensive background and analytical skills to today’'s surprising farm and ranch market as editor of LandOwner.

Latest Stories
A key financial ratio we watch at LandOwner Newsletter suggests the financial health of the agriculture sector is still strong and not overly leveraged.
The stronger land prices of late 2021 continued higher through the first half of 2022.
An index monitored by pension and investment funds show total returns to farmland ownership rose during the second quarter of 2021 when compared to the previous quarter and a year earlier.
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The number of farms sold in 2017 declined for the fifth year in a row, according to data from Farm Credit Services of America (FCSAmerica) and Frontier Farm Credit. The lenders report the number of sales in their service area declined by about 270, or 7.5%, compared to 2016.
Following a 5.3% decrease in 2015, cash rents in Minnesota declined by an average of 1.8% in 2016.
In the Corn Belt, farmland prices did increase a bit after harvest, just as they did in 2016, but overall they remain steady.
A March 28 auction in Stevens Co., Kan., saw...
A private listing resulted in the February sale...
The first step in repealing the onerous WOTUS...