As crop prices surge, firms and farmers vie for land

From the potato fields of Michigan to the high prairies of Kansas, farmers are receiving record prices for their land—but economists and banking regulators warn that this boom, like so many before it, could end badly.

Across the American heartland, farmland prices are soaring. In places like Waco, Neb., and Chickasaw County, Iowa, where the boom-and-bust cycle of farming reaches deep into the psyche, some families are selling the land that they have worked for generations, to cash in while they can.