The average price of farmland in NI has almost quadrupled over the past 25 years, analysis of historic land price data has found.

As outlined in Figure 1, the average price of land in NI back in 2000 was £3,900/ac and it compares to the latest market average of £15,202/ac for 2025.

The Irish Farmers Journal has been surveying land prices in NI since 2010 as part of the annual Agricultural Land Price Report magazine.

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Prior to that, land price data from 2000 to 2005 was published by DAERA through its annual Statistical Review of NI Agriculture publication.

Unfortunately, there is a blind spot from 2006 to 2009, where no data on average NI land prices seem to be publicly available. Nonetheless, the available records for 21 of the past 25 years confirms a clear upward trend in the local agricultural land market.

Although land prices at the start of the millennium seem cheap by today’s standards, figure 1 shows that the market pushed on at a sharp pace during the early 2000s.

In the period from 2000 to 2005, DAERA’s records show that the average NI land price more than doubled from £3,900/ac to £8,031/ac.

For the years where no data is available, reports suggest the market continued to power on amid the economic boom before falling back during the financial crash in the late 2000s.

A downward movement in NI land prices was evident in the initial years of the Irish Farmers Journal survey. The average figure fell from £9,585/ac in 2010 to bottom out at £8,726/ac in 2013.

The local land market then edged upwards at a fairly slow pace during the remainder of the decade to reach £10,045/ac by 2020.

Since then, the market has pushed on at a rapid rate, with the average NI land price taking several big jumps over the past five years to reach £15,202/ac last year.

It is also noteworthy that this figure is an average price for the whole of NI. The market has pushed on at an even faster rate to reach even higher prices in certain parts of NI.

For example, the average land price in Co Armagh last year was £22,833/ac and there are plenty of market hotspots where bidding for sought after land starts at £30,000/ac and beyond.