USDA-NASS Cash Rents Survey

Every year, the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) conducts a statewide survey to estimate cash rent paid for agricultural land. The survey includes farms and ranches with $1000 or more in agricultural sales and a history of renting land on a cash basis. Results from the survey are published every year in August and provide a basis for county-level estimates of the land rental rates paid for non-irrigated cropland, irrigated cropland, and permanent pastureland. It is clearly stated on the USDA-NASS website that the survey does not include land with buildings/barns, land rented for a share of the crop, on a fee per head, per pound of gain, by animal unit month, and rented free of charge.

The information can be found on the USDA-NASS Cash Rents website. To access the county-specific data, go to "Get the data" and then to "Quick Stats 2.0" (Figure 1).

Next, you will be prompted to the Quick Stats page, where you will see several boxes with information (Figure 2).

To access county information, make the following selections

• Program: Survey
• Sector: Economics
• Group: Expenses
• Commodity: Rent
• Geographical level: County
• State: Pennsylvania
• County: Select the county
• Data item: Select "Rent, cash, cropland non-irrigated- expense measured in $/ acre"
• and/or "Rent, cash, pastureland - expense measured in $/ acre"
• Year: Select year (to make multiple selections in any of the boxes, click the "ctrl" key and keep it pressed while you select multiple years, counties, data items, etc.)
• Click on "Get data."

Note that every time an item is selected, the page takes a few seconds to update. Before the final selection is made, the webpage should look as shown in Figure 3.

Cash rent estimates are reported in $ per acre per year, and information is available for most counties from 2008 to 2014 and 2016 to 2024.

Details on data collection, how data and outliers were handled, sample size, response rates, and coefficients of variation can be found in the section "Methodology and Quality Measures." For example, the sample size for Pennsylvania in 2024 was 5002 farms, and the response rate was 43%. The number of farmers that responded to the survey each year per county is not available on the website.

Cash rents can be quite variable within the state, a county, a town, and even among farms along the same road. Each cropland or pastureland has unique characteristics that can lead to very contrasting rental rates, including soil types, average yields, access to water, previous crops, and prevalent weeds, among many other factors that should be considered before signing a lease. In addition, stay informed on what others are charging, market prices for agricultural products, and other external factors that may impact cash rental rates. Additional information and resources can be found in the article "Owning and Leasing Agricultural Real Estate."