Farmland prices are soaring across Florida, rising an average of 50 percent to nearly 90 percent between 2004 and 2005, a new University of Florida survey reported Friday.
But agricultural land prices are being pushed to record levels by speculators and urban growth pressures, not success on the farms, said survey author John Reynolds, a professor with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
“It’s land-buying fever,” Reynolds said Friday from his Gainesville offices, in the heart of fast growing — and urbanizing — Alachua County.