Coronavirus Perspectives: Land Value During a Liquidity Flood; Steve Bruere of the People's Company

About this episode

Steve Bruere, land broker and founder of The People's Company in Iowa, joins Vance to discuss how the flood of federal stimulus money and collapsing oil prices are likely to affect farmland values. Bruere explains farmland's traditional role as an inflation hedge and safe-haven asset, describes how his firm pivoted farm auctions to online-only formats mid-crisis (with one successful sale drawing 20 registered bidders), and notes county recorders shutting down as a real operational bottleneck. He lays out the competing forces at play — cheap money and low interest rates should push land values up, but collapsing crude oil prices (roughly $20/barrel versus $70-80 a year earlier) threaten ethanol demand and, by extension, corn demand, creating genuine uncertainty about the net effect. Bruere reveals his firm is expanding by hiring seven new employees even amid the crisis, framing this as following the 2008 financial-crisis lesson that "the people that were bold and brave" profited from downturns. Vance connects Bruere's economic optimism to his own sociological Overton-window framework, noting that this same two-week horizon Bruere uses for economic recovery is the window in which Vance expects to learn whether crisis-driven radical ideas will fade back to normal or become entrenched.

“A whole bunch of money is gonna flood into the system. And where is that money gonna go? What is it going to do? Do you think it's going to impact the price of land?”

“In an inflationary period, the debtor wins, right? If you cut out the value of the dollar and you've taken on a huge amount of debt, it's, that's the thing... if you think inflation is coming, then you have to say, do we wanna be putting more money out into the market when it's gonna be worth less in the future?”

“Not only is the Overton window kicked open wide open where there's all kinds of possibilities that came out, I think that a crisis like this pushes people out to the more radical ideas. And I think within two weeks... we're gonna know whether or not that window closes back up and we go back to normal ideas.”

Key moments

• Bruere explains The People's Company touches every stage of farmland transactions — listings, auctions, appraisals, absentee management — across 22 states.
• Farm auctions pivot to online-only format mid-crisis; the first online-only sale draws 20 registered bidders and closes successfully, becoming the template going forward.
• middle ~25% (strong money excerpt): Vance's direct question about where a coming $2 trillion stimulus flood will go and whether it will inflate land prices.
• The stark oil-price collapse — crude dropped from roughly $70-80/barrel a year earlier to around $20/barrel, threatening ethanol plant closures and corn demand.
• Bruere discloses receiving an unsolicited letter from a lending institution suspending all principal payments on outstanding loans, unprompted by any hardship claim — a sign of how fast credit markets were moving to prevent freezing.
• Vance's own real-world example — his friend was 15 days from closing a multi-unit apartment deal when the crisis hit, now facing eviction moratoriums that trap landlords with non-paying tenants they cannot remove.
• late ~70% (strong money excerpt): Bruere and Vance discuss the debtor-favoring dynamics of an inflationary period and the dilemma facing bank boards deciding whether to keep lending into a weakening-dollar environment.
• Vance's personal reversal — having worked at Monsanto and valued industrial-scale efficient agriculture, he now says he's "damn glad" small farmers and free-range operations exist, having personally sourced meat directly from farmers during the crisis.
• late ~85% (strong window excerpt): Vance's sociological framing — the Overton window is "kicked open wide open," pushing people toward radical ideas, with the next two weeks determining whether it snaps back to normal or stays open.

Notable quotes

“Not only is the Overton window kicked open wide open... I think that a crisis like this pushes people out to the more radical ideas. And I think within two weeks we're gonna know whether or not that window closes back up.”

“I got a letter yesterday from one of the lending institutions... unsolicited, unprovoked, just said, hey, we are going to suspend any principal payments on any outstanding loans.”

“I worked for Monsanto and I saw the huge value of having these enormous, efficient, effective farms. But now... I am damn glad there are some people out there that had free range chicken, small gardens.”

“Last week crude was trading around 20 bucks a barrel... it was probably 70, 80 bucks a barrel a year ago.”