KITCHENER -- The housing market may have pumped the brakes amid the global pandemic, but farmland is as valuable as ever.

The University of Guelph's Agricultural College has released its yearly Farm Price Index, which looks at how much farmland costs and rents for.

The most expensive farmland is in Peel Region at $37,500 per acre.

The next most valuable land is in Waterloo Region, Perth County and Oxford Counties.

Land in those three areas averages about $20,000 per acre.

The rental prices, though, don't reflect the same value across the board.

Perth, Oxford and Huron Counties all topped the charts with a median cash rent per tillable acre of $300. Waterloo Region was a full third lower at $200, while Peel Region, the most expensive for purchasing, was surveyed at just $100 per tillable acre.

The cost of Waterloo Region farmland is up 11 per cent since 2016.

According to a website showing interactive maps of southwestern Ontario, the survey closed before COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization.

With that in mind, the publishers say they don't believe it influenced farmers' perspectives or reporting.