Why Has the Price of Pasture Increased Relative to the Price of Cropland?

Historically, cropland rental rates have been substantially higher than rental rates for pasture. Currently however, the gap between selling prices of cropland and pasture in Oklahoma has shrunk in western Oklahoma and pasture now sells for more than cropland in eastern Oklahoma. Regression results show that primarily two factors explain this shrinkage. One is that the explosion in the deer population has increased the value of controlling deer hunting rights; the other is that increases in income have created a demand for land for noncommercial farms and ex-urban development. The income approach has become less useful to land appraisers, which may be due to difficulty in measuring returns from hunting rights and hobby farming.