Monday, November 21, 2011

Soil is the hot commodity

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/21/us-farmland-idUSTRE7AK0EA20111121


(Reuters) - It took just 31 minutes for Donald Ellingson's family to end an agrarian tradition that had survived more than a half-century, by auctioning off 153 acres of rich Iowa farmland.
Five years after their father's death, Ellingson's three children had grown weary of the demands of running a farm. Their tenant farmer had retired, and finding a new one was tough. The youngest of them was 60 -- too old, they agreed, to return to a life of risky finances and long work days.