It took just 31 minutes for Donald Ellingson’s family to end an agrarian tradition that had survived more than a half-century, by auctioning off 153 acres of rich Iowa farmland, according to a Reuters special report.

Five years after their father’s death, Ellingson’s three children had grown weary of the demands of running a farm. Their tenant farmer had retired, and finding a new one was tough. The youngest of them was 60 — too old, they agreed, to return to a life of risky finances and long workdays.

Combines and corn were not part of the lives of Ellingson’s eight grandchildren or his 14 great-grandchildren. They live far from here. And given land prices these days, the family agreed it was the right time to let the past go.

“I think Dad would be fine with us selling the land,” said Diane Guerrttman, 60, who lives in Wyoming and works with at-risk children.

Across the Midwest, the dizzying surge in rural land prices is accelerating a fundamental reshaping of the farm sector in the world’s biggest food exporter. Instead of digging in to benefit from the boom in grain prices, the next generation is opting to cash out of the small, family-owned farms that harbor centuries of rural wisdom and deep tradition.

The bidding wars that are now common at farm auctions and inside attorneys’ offices, resulting in a 25 percent jump in land values last quarter, are bittersweet for heirs and aging farmers alike, whose children have fled to the city, leaving them unable or unwilling to shoulder the rising financial risk of a farm.

Estate sales are cropping up, too, say real estate agents. Farming heirs like the Ellingsons, who long ago left the land with no plans to return, would rather have the cash than take on the challenge of a business whose profits fluctuate with weather, commodity price and politics.

“I know it’s the right thing, but it’s still hard to see it go,” said Max Ellingson, 67, after the auctioneer’s voice quieted inside the American Legion hall here and the $1.2 million final bid was accepted. Click here to read the entire article.