Negotiations over cash rental rates for the 2020 growing season are likely to heat up soon after farmers wrap up the 2019 harvest and Iowa’s weather begins to turn colder, according to Steve Johnson, an Iowa State University (ISU) Extension farm management specialist.

However, it does not appear there will be wholesale changes in cash rental rates going into the 2020 crop year, said Johnson, who has been holding  a series of farmland leasing meetings at several sites around central Iowa in July and August.

“I think we will end up in a cash rent standoff for a lot of farms in Iowa,” Johnson said last week at a farmland leasing meeting in Winterset. “Farm profitability is putting pressure on cash rents. I think...