Agricultural land values in Chase County actually decreased this year after showing increases of more than 74 percent from 2013 through 2016.
    One has to go all the way back to 2007 before seeing a drop in some county valuations.
    County Assessor Dotty Bartels uses market sales data over the past three years to set property valuations.
    This year, the county valuation dropped 5.96 percent due to falling prices for irrigated  and dryland ag land.  
    For 2018, Bartels used the sales from Oct. 1, 2015, through Sept. 30, 2017, to calculate property values on both ag and residential property in the county.
    Land sale prices that were fueled by record commodity prices in 2012 and 2013 are no longer figured into the three-year average to determine value.
    Those years represented a period when corn hit a high of $7 per bushel and wheat $8 per bushel.
    This increased the demand for land, with irrigated pivot quarters selling for as much as $1.3 million. Since that period, land prices have come back down as commodity prices dropped significantly.

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