U.S. farm economics 9

The south half of the Lushton farm today; the building site is long gone.
Photograph taken from the west road toward the south end of the quarter.

Time to turn to the question of how much per acre was paid for the farm south of Lushton. As we have noted before, the 160 acres of the farm was purchased from John Runnalls in late 1927 or early 1928.

Importantly, although Grandpa Chris and Grandma Malinda farmed the entire quarter, they did not own it all, nor did they buy all the land that they did own.

In fact, Grandpa and Grandma owned only the south 80 acres; the north 80 was owned by Grandpa’s brother Pete, his sister Anna, and perhaps another sibling (Henry?).

Further, of the 80 acres they owned, they purchased only 40; Grandpa’s parents Peter P and Margaretha gave them the other 40, just as they had presumably given the north 80 acres to two or three other children. When we put all this together, it seems most logical to imagine that Peter P purchased the entire 160 acres from John Runnalls and then gave away 120 acres and had Grandpa buy from him (Peter) the remaining 40 acres. (The fact that Peter gave Grandpa 40 acres and had Grandpa buy another 40 acres will become important in the next post, about Grandpa’s financing for the land purchase.)

Because we know the year the land was purchased, we can estimate about how much was paid for the land, drawing once again from the data in the Hinman bulletin (1934, table 4, 24):

1924	$126
1925	$126
1926	$124
1927	$121
1928	$124
1929	$120
1930	$115
1931	$99
1932	$88
1933	$77

Land prices were relatively steady between 1926 and 1928, and the average price for those years was $123. Using that reasonable estimate for our calculations, we can suggest that Peter P paid $14,760 for the 120 acres that he gave away and that Grandpa and Grandma paid $4,920 for their 40 acres. A few words of caution and clarification about these rough estimates.

1. As mentioned previously, the prices listed are averages over seven counties in the immediate area. The Lushton farm may have sold for more or for less, but the price was probably in this range.

2. It seems most likely that Grandpa and Grandma bought the 40 that contained the house site (they were going to live there, after all), so it is possible that the price per acre for that 40 was higher than for the other 120 acres.

Although an investment of $4,920 for 80 acres may not seem that large, the trend of the land prices in the rest of the table above reveals trouble brewing. Grandpa and Grandma bought land a year before the stock market crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. By the time their son Carl was born, their land had lost $46 an acre, or roughly 38 percent of its previous value. A rapidly declining land value was not their only problem. Grandpa and Grandma also had mortgage payments to make, which will be the subject of the next post.

Source Cited

Hinman, Eleanor H. 1934. History of Farm Land Prices in Eleven Nebraska Counties 1873–1933. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 72. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here.