Three big tracts of farmland in East Bloomfield have sold for sharply higher prices in the last two years, and the man who charts property values here says it’s part of a broader trend fueled by higher prices for farm products and competition among farmers.

As a result, farmers can expect to see assessments on the most productive land rise “from $1,400 to $1,800 an acre” in the tentative assessment roll East Bloomfield assessor Don Collins will file on May 1.

“I’m a general appraiser of farm land. That’s my specialty,” said Collins, who appraises for the Farm Service Agency. “This is all over, in Wayne County, Wyoming County, Orleans County, Genesee County ... not just here. I’m very sure of my facts.”

Not everyone agrees with Collins on the magnitude of the surge in land prices or the reasons, though it’s clear farming, like any industry, is in constant flux.

The 29 percent jump in assessments on the best farmland land contrasts with the slower rise in home values. In his revaluation of all the property in town, Collins said, home assessments will rise 4 to 5 percent, less for homes built in the first half of the 20th century due to their poor energy efficiency.

“They are taking longer to sell,” he said of this older construction.

Even building lots, which are in greater demand, are not rising in value as fast as cropland, Collins said.

“Lot values are probably up 8 to 10 percent,” he added.

Collins examines and revalues property in town annually in an effort to make sure assessments match market values, which in assessment lingo puts a town at what is called “100 percent equalization.” Adjusting assessments for farmland, which makes up one-quarter of the town, will help boost East Bloomfield’s rate from 90 to 100 percent, Collins said. In other words, right now Albany considers the town tax base to be assessed — in aggregate  — 10 percent below the market.

Among his evidence that farmland value is rising:

• The 384-acre Lusk Farm on Routes 5 and 20 sold for $1 million to the nearby Rogers Farm on Route 64. After removing buildings and non-tillable land from that deal, Collins found the land price for high-quality tillable acres to be $2,500 an acre.

• Brock Acres Realty LLC, the holding company representing the 3,000-acre Brocklebank Farm, paid $300,000 for part of the Hamlin farm just east of Bloomfield. Collins figured the 103.8 acres of tillable land in this deal at $2,524 an acre.

• The 128-acre Rider Farm sold by land contract to the Fessner Farm for $281,000. This farm, which sits astride the West Bloomfield/East Bloomfield town line, returned $2,500 an acre for tillable land.

Collins also references the recent sale of a $2.2 million dairy farm in Hopewell, another sale of 250 acres of East Bloomfield Hamlin farm land and buildings for $572,000, a $3,100-per-acre sale of tillable land outside Avon, and several land sales in Benton, Yates County, for $2,800, $2,600, and $2,400 an acre, varying in soil type.

Some of these big sales have taken place very recently, and Collins can only base assessments on sales before July 1, 2007, thus the more conservative figure of $1,800 for top farmland. Property owners in East Bloomfield will get letters notifying them of their tentative assessments later this month.

But even with careful research, Collins may have a debate on his hands if he raises land assessments too far too fast. Jim Monahan, branch manager of the Phelps office of Farm Credit of Western New York, a cooperative providing credit and financing to farmers, sees no land boom in his area.

“Prices have been rising,” said Monahan, but, “We haven’t seen anything out of normal for us.”

Prices for farm products — milk, corn and wheat — are up, he agreed, but that does not necessarily mean farmers are rich.

“Five dollar (a bushel) corn is just the beginning of this question. I don’t know that you are going to see increases in margins,” said Monahan, referring to profits.

Federal ethanol subsidies may have been a windfall for crop farmers, and the rising Asian demand for milk products — cheese pizzas, lattes and the like — are filling farmers’ pockets. But the money is going right back out to pay higher prices for fuel, fertilizer, labor and pesticides.

“Most of the successful farmers out there really know their costs,” said Monahan. “Overall, we have not seen (land) prices rise more than 5 percent or 10 percent.”

Monahan also said towns with active residential building and development histories like East Bloomfield and Canandaigua are different.

“The Lusk farm has got an awful lot of road frontage on it,” he said.

East Bloomfield dairy farmer John Lincoln is president of New York Farm Bureau, and he worked as an assessor himself, from the mid-1970s to 1993. He said Collins may be onto something but perhaps not to the tune of nearly 30 percent.

“In general land has been undervalued,” Lincoln said. “I’m just not seeing a two-times kind of value now. Even in the Midwest you are not seeing land values rising past 15 or 20 percent.”

In New York, the diversity of farms makes assessments more complex.

Dairy farms, crop farms, fruit farms, truck farms — New York has them all, and they all pay a certain price for land, said Lincoln.

“It’s not apples to apples,” agreed Monahan. “You have to be careful.”

The town of East Bloomfield has three remaining dairy operations. The Lusk farm once shipped specially grown hay to Manhattan’s herd of carriage horses working Central Park, a unique niche. The White farm on the west side of East Bloomfield ships vegetables to urban markets, grows early corn under plastic and retails crops itself. The Rogers farm, buyer of the Lusk hay farm on Routes 5 and 20, is expanding to help a growing farm family find a base for the next generation.

Then there is the manure issue. Collins said dairy farmers need more land these days to have enough room to spread manure, so as not to run afoul of state environmental protection rules.

 “I don’t quite buy the philosophy of that being the driver,” countered Lincoln, noting that East Bloomfield has no 2,000-cow megafarms. Lincoln himself has 200 cows.

And if higher corn prices are driving land values, technology could just as easily undo it, Lincoln said.

A new, higher-yield corn could lead to abundance and, in turn, lower prices.

History, according to Lincoln, records the rush to enlarge farms on credit in the 1980s as a disastrous scenario, once crop prices tanked.

“In 1985, there was a major depression of land value in the Midwest, where prices had risen to $8,000 to $10,000 an acre,” said Lincoln.

That scenario could repeat itself if ethanol subsidies and corn tariffs now in place to protect the North American market are withdrawn by lawmakers in Washington.

“Politically, those could be changed by Congress any time,” said Lincoln.

Property owners with questions about their new assessments can reach Assessor Don Collins at the East Bloomfield Town Hall at (585) 657-7368 on Wednesday and Thursday from 8 a.m. to noon.