This is why. You have other alternatives competing for that farmland and driving up the value of it. We see that here every day. If the competition were purely between producers, you wouldn't see that value. I pick on conservation organizations because that's our experience, but as soon as you have something else--and it doesn't matter if it's that or a company that wants to buy a parcel of land to build an ethanol plant and they have some capital--as soon as something competes for land, farmland values compete with that price every day. That's what drives the profitability up. It's absolutely not profitability in farming that does it.
On April 18th, 2007. See this statement in context.