Emma Hamilton | IOWA

How Farmland Market Statistics Influence Investment Decisions in Agriculture

Emma Hamilton is Brokerage Manager at Peoples Company, an Iowa-based land brokerage and agricultural real estate firm, where she oversees transaction operations and supports the firm's network of land agents. She also serves as project and development manager for FarmWorth, the company's proprietary farmland mapping and data platform, where she works with the development team to expand its data capabilities and improve how the platform serves both agents and clients.

Emma's career at Peoples Company began as an intern in the Corporate Services division before she moved into a Land Analyst role on the Capital Markets team, where she focused on matching agricultural deals to client needs. That path, from hands-on transaction support to building the data infrastructure behind farmland decision-making, shapes the question at the center of her Nuffield research: how farmland market data and insights guide investment decisions in agriculture.

As a 2026 Nuffield Scholar, Emma will travel across five continents and ten countries over the course of the year, meeting with producers, data providers, and agricultural stakeholders to study how information, including pricing trends, transaction records, and market indicators, is gathered, interpreted, and used to guide agricultural investment decisions across different regions and farming systems. She's especially interested in how the availability and quality of economic information shapes the choices investors, lenders, and landowners make, and what that means for farmers and rural communities on the ground.

Emma holds a bachelor's degree in Agricultural Business, with a minor in Entrepreneurial Studies, from Iowa State University.