Roughly 85 percent of Iowa’s land area is farmland, one of the highest percentages of any state in the country. With about 30.6 million of the state’s 35.8 million total land acres dedicated to agriculture, Iowa’s landscape is dominated by crop fields and pastures in a way few other states can match.
How Iowa’s Farmland Breaks Down
Not all of Iowa’s 30.6 million farm acres are planted with crops. That total includes cropland, pastureland, woodland on farms, and land occupied by farmsteads, roads, and other agricultural infrastructure. Cropland makes up the largest share by far, with corn and soybeans accounting for the vast majority of planted acreage.
According to USDA data, Iowa farmers plant about 13.55 million acres of corn (including both grain and silage) and 9.45 million acres of soybeans each year. Those two crops alone cover roughly 23 million acres, which is about 64 percent of the state’s entire land area. The remaining cropland goes to hay, oats, and smaller acreages of other crops, while pasture and other agricultural land fills out the rest.
Why the Percentage Is So High
Iowa sits squarely in the heart of the Corn Belt, where deep, fertile prairie soils and reliable rainfall create ideal conditions for row-crop agriculture. The state’s terrain is also relatively flat compared to neighboring states with more forests or rocky ground, meaning a larger share of the land surface can be cultivated. These natural advantages were recognized early: settlers converted tallgrass prairie to farmland through the 1800s and early 1900s, and that land has stayed in agricultural use ever since.
For comparison, the national average is closer to 44 percent of land in farms. States in the arid West may have large ranches that inflate their farm-acreage totals, but much of that land is low-productivity rangeland. Iowa’s farmland is disproportionately high-quality cropland, which is part of what makes the state the top U.S. producer of corn and hogs and the second-largest producer of soybeans.
Who Owns Iowa’s Farmland
Nationally, about 84 percent of farmland is owned by private individuals or family farm entities, and Iowa largely mirrors that pattern. The state has a strong tradition of family-operated farms, though the ownership picture is shifting as farmers retire. Many retiring landowners hold onto their acreage and rent it out for income, or the land passes to heirs who may not farm it themselves. This has created a growing class of non-operator landlords who own the ground but hire tenants to work it. Iowa’s cash rental rates for cropland are among the highest in the nation, reflecting the productivity of the soil.
Large institutional investors own a very small slice. The USDA estimates the cumulative value of all U.S. farmland at $3.4 trillion, and land held by big institutional investors accounts for roughly half of one percent of that total. In Iowa, where farmland values regularly exceed $10,000 per acre in productive areas, the high cost of entry limits the pace of institutional buying.
How Much Farmland Iowa Is Losing
Despite the state’s overwhelming agricultural character, Iowa does lose farmland each year. Between 2001 and 2021, about 87,592 acres of Iowa agricultural land were converted to development, primarily for residential and commercial construction. Development accounted for 90 percent of all agricultural land loss in Iowa during that period, a higher share than in most neighboring Midwestern states, where forestland or wetland conversion played a larger role.
That 87,592-acre loss over 20 years works out to roughly 4,400 acres per year. In a state with over 30 million farm acres, the annual conversion rate is small in percentage terms (well under one-tenth of a percent per year), but the losses tend to concentrate around cities and along highway corridors, where the most accessible and often most productive land sits. Once farmland is paved over, the conversion is essentially permanent.
What This Means in Context
Iowa’s 85 percent farmland figure is not just a statistical curiosity. It shapes the state’s economy, tax base, water quality, and rural character. Agriculture and related industries are the backbone of Iowa’s economy, and the sheer concentration of cropland is what makes the state a global force in grain and livestock production. It also means that land-use decisions in Iowa, from solar farm siting to highway expansion to new housing developments, almost always involve converting agricultural ground, because there is very little non-farm land left to build on.