[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"blog-\u002Fblog\u002Ffarmland-due-diligence-with-the-federal-land-pack-nrcs-soils-crop-history-and-flood-risk-before-you-bid":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"body":6,"cover":137,"date":138,"description":139,"draft":140,"extension":141,"meta":142,"navigation":146,"path":147,"seo":148,"stem":149,"tags":150,"__hash__":156},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Ffarmland-due-diligence-with-the-federal-land-pack-nrcs-soils-crop-history-and-flood-risk-before-you-bid.md","Farmland Due Diligence with the Federal Land Pack: NRCS Soils, Crop History, and Flood Risk Before You Bid",{"type":7,"value":8,"toc":126},"minimark",[9,13,16,21,24,40,43,47,50,59,63,66,69,73,76,84,88,91,95,98,111,115,118],[10,11,12],"p",{},"A rural land auction gives you days, sometimes hours, to decide whether a quarter section is worth a bid. Before you order a full appraisal or sign a purchase agreement, you want a fast, defensible read on the ground itself: does it flood, will it grow a row crop, has it actually been farmed, and can you legally reach it. That early read is farmland due diligence, and the federal land layers that answer those questions sit in separate government portals that were never keyed to a legal description.",[10,14,15],{},"This post walks through the four questions a farmland buyer or ag lender should answer before the appraisal, which federal dataset answers each one, and how Township America's Federal Land pack pulls them together from a single legal description. It is a pre-screen, not a substitute for a full appraisal or an ASTM E1527-21 Phase 1 Environmental Site Assessment, and the last section is explicit about where that line falls.",[17,18,20],"h2",{"id":19},"the-four-questions-to-answer-before-you-order-an-appraisal","The four questions to answer before you order an appraisal",[10,22,23],{},"A full appraisal, and on many deals a Phase 1 ESA, come later. They cost money and take time, so you only want to commission them on tracts that clear an early screen. Four questions decide whether a rural parcel clears it:",[25,26,27,31,34,37],"ul",{},[28,29,30],"li",{},"Flood exposure: how much of the parcel sits in a mapped flood zone?",[28,32,33],{},"Soil productivity: is this row-crop ground, grazing ground, or a mix?",[28,35,36],{},"Crop history: what has actually been planted here, and how recently?",[28,38,39],{},"Access: can you legally reach the tract and any water on it?",[10,41,42],{},"Each answer lives in a federal dataset. FEMA publishes flood zones, the NRCS publishes soil surveys, the USDA publishes crop history, and the BLM publishes surface management and public access. Pulling all four for one parcel from four portals, then lining them up against the parcel boundary, is a multi-hour job per tract. The rest of this post covers what each layer tells you and how to read it against a bid.",[17,44,46],{"id":45},"flood-exposure-fema-nfhl-flood-zones","Flood exposure: FEMA NFHL flood zones",[10,48,49],{},"Start with flood because it is the fastest way to disqualify a tract or reprice a bid. The Federal Land pack overlays FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer (NFHL) zones on the parcel. What you are looking for is how much of the described acreage falls inside a Special Flood Hazard Area, the high-risk zones FEMA labels A and AE.",[10,51,52,53,58],{},"Flood zone classification has two practical consequences for a farmland deal. A structure inside a Special Flood Hazard Area generally triggers a mandatory flood insurance requirement on a federally backed loan, which raises the annual carrying cost. Separately, cropland that floods on a short return interval carries real yield risk even when no insurance is required. For an ag lender, that combination feeds directly into how much of the purchase price you are willing to finance. Seeing the zone boundaries drawn on the actual ",[54,55,57],"a",{"href":56},"\u002Fguides\u002Ftownship-range-system","section and quarter-section"," beats a zone label alone, because it tells you whether the risk sits on the tillable acres or on a corner you would never plant.",[17,60,62],{"id":61},"soil-productivity-nrcs-ssurgo","Soil productivity: NRCS SSURGO",[10,64,65],{},"Soil is what separates row-crop ground you would pay for from grazing ground you would not. The pack pulls NRCS SSURGO, the detailed soil survey the Natural Resources Conservation Service maintains for most agricultural counties. SSURGO divides the parcel into soil map units and carries, per unit, the ratings that matter for a land decision: the farmland classification (whether the soil qualifies as prime farmland or farmland of statewide importance) and productivity indexes such as the National Commodity Crop Productivity Index.",[10,67,68],{},"Read the productivity index as a relative score, not a yield promise. A parcel that is mostly prime farmland with a high index is row-crop ground, and comparable row-crop sales should anchor your bid. One dominated by low-index units, shallow soils, or steep slopes is more likely grazing ground that trades at a different price per acre. Because SSURGO is drawn per soil map unit, a single quarter section often carries two or three soil types, and the overlay shows you where the good ground stops. That boundary matters when a seller prices the whole tract on its best forty acres.",[17,70,72],{"id":71},"crop-history-usda-cropland-data-layer","Crop history: USDA Cropland Data Layer",[10,74,75],{},"A seller will tell you the ground has been in corn and beans. The USDA Cropland Data Layer (CDL) lets you check. CDL is an annual, nationwide raster that classifies what crop grew on every parcel of US farmland, published one year at a time. The Federal Land pack surfaces that year-by-year history on the parcel, so you can see the actual rotation instead of the described one.",[10,77,78,79,83],{},"Two things to look for. First, verify the rotation the seller claims: several recent seasons of corn and soybeans is a different asset than a tract that shows fallow or idle classifications in the same window. Second, watch for a break in the pattern, because a fallow year can flag a drainage problem, a conservation program enrollment, or ground that was taken out of production for a reason worth asking about. If your diligence also touches crop-insurance filings, the same per-quarter-section view carries over to that workflow, which we cover in ",[54,80,82],{"href":81},"\u002Fblog\u002Fplss-crop-insurance-verify-quarter-sections-filing-deadline","verifying quarter sections before a crop insurance deadline",".",[17,85,87],{"id":86},"access-blm-surface-management-and-plad-public-access","Access: BLM Surface Management and PLAD public access",[10,89,90],{},"A rural tract often has no street address, and legal access is not something you can assume from an aerial photo. The pack overlays BLM Surface Management, which shows the managing agency for adjacent public land, and PLAD public access, which shows documented public access routes. On a parcel that abuts federal land or relies on a public road or waterway to reach it, confirming access before you close is not optional. A landlocked quarter section with no recorded access is worth materially less than the same soils with a clear route in, and it is cheap to catch now and expensive to discover after closing.",[17,92,94],{"id":93},"running-all-four-from-one-legal-description","Running all four from one legal description",[10,96,97],{},"The point of the pack is that you answer all four questions from one input. Enter the legal description, for example the northeast quarter of Section 20, Township 83 North, Range 26 West of the Fifth Principal Meridian in central Iowa, and Township America resolves it against official BLM survey data and returns the full parcel boundary as a polygon, not just a center point. The Federal Land pack then overlays FEMA flood, USFWS wetlands and critical habitat, NRCS SSURGO soils, USDA CDL crop history, USFS wildfire risk, BLM surface and public access, and USGS 3DEP elevation on that boundary, fifteen federal layers in all, and produces a Federal Land Diligence PDF you can attach to the file.",[10,99,100,101,105,106,110],{},"Because the resolver reads legal descriptions directly, you can screen a full county's worth of tracts without hand-plotting each one. If you also work Texas ranch ground or energy tracts, stacking the Texas or Energy pack rolls those layers into one Combined Parcel Report PDF for the same parcel. Start from the ",[54,102,104],{"href":103},"\u002Fguides\u002Fconvert-section-township-range-to-coordinates","section, township, and range converter"," or a state page such as the ",[54,107,109],{"href":108},"\u002Fiowa-plss-converter","Iowa PLSS converter"," to see the boundary before you add the packs.",[17,112,114],{"id":113},"what-the-pre-screen-does-and-does-not-replace","What the pre-screen does and does not replace",[10,116,117],{},"Be clear with yourself and your credit committee about what this is. The Federal Land pack is a fifteen-layer environmental and productivity pre-screen that helps you decide which tracts deserve a full appraisal and which to pass on. It is not an appraisal, and it is not an ASTM E1527-21 Phase 1 ESA. It draws only on federal, public-record data, so it will not surface a private easement, a lease, or a contamination history that never reached a federal dataset. Used as an early filter, it turns a four-portal, multi-hour check into one legal description lookup, which is what makes it practical to run on every tract rather than only the ones you have already fallen for.",[10,119,120,121,125],{},"The pack attaches to a Pro or Business plan for $80 per month, so an ag lender or farmland buyer screening several tracts a month pays once and runs the pre-screen as often as the pipeline requires. See ",[54,122,124],{"href":123},"\u002Fpricing","pricing"," for how the Federal Land pack stacks on Pro and Business.",{"title":127,"searchDepth":128,"depth":128,"links":129},"",2,[130,131,132,133,134,135,136],{"id":19,"depth":128,"text":20},{"id":45,"depth":128,"text":46},{"id":61,"depth":128,"text":62},{"id":71,"depth":128,"text":72},{"id":86,"depth":128,"text":87},{"id":93,"depth":128,"text":94},{"id":113,"depth":128,"text":114},null,"2026-08-04T10:00:00Z","Farmland due diligence with federal land layers: check FEMA flood zones, NRCS soils, USDA crop history, and BLM access from one legal description before you bid.",false,"md",{"author":143,"category":144,"image":145},"Township America","industry","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Ffarmland-due-diligence-with-the-federal-land-pack-nrcs-soils-crop-history-and-flood-risk-before-you-bid\u002Fcover.webp",true,"\u002Fblog\u002Ffarmland-due-diligence-with-the-federal-land-pack-nrcs-soils-crop-history-and-flood-risk-before-you-bid",{"title":5,"description":139},"blog\u002Ffarmland-due-diligence-with-the-federal-land-pack-nrcs-soils-crop-history-and-flood-risk-before-you-bid",[151,152,153,154,155],"farmland due diligence","federal land pack","nrcs soils","flood risk","plss","P1kz1r7zIpXMg04RlMnYlwrOC0nyarFAP2Pfns4b5NI"]