Your columnist Alan Guebert is right – some things are more reliable than death and taxes. Year in and year out, commercial bankers complain that they are disadvantaged when it comes to competing against the farmer-owned Farm Credit System. Mr.
Guebert accepted the description provided by banking lobbyists. He should know that bank trade association press releases contain more fiction than fact and done his own homework.

The fact is Farm Credit has proposed a few modest changes to its lending eligibility to make more farm-related businesses eligible to borrow from the System. Farm Credit has not proposed to “lend money to any and all commercial enterprises,” and that certainly is not what a House Subcommittee has approved.

To be eligible under the House proposal a business would have to: 1) handle or process farm commodities; and, 2) these activities must directly relate to renewable energy. The businesses that meet these two criteria are small in number and the net result is that a new competitive source of capital for farm-related businesses won’t be available.

Farm Credit has a mandate to serve agriculture. The farmers that own the System keep it focused on doing so. Its dedication to agriculture’s future is evidenced by the $9.3 billion in loans made last year to support beginning farmers and the $5.5 billion to support young farmers.

Your readers would be better served by stories focused on how to get more resources to agriculture and rural America rather than ones focused on denying them more.

-Kenneth E. Auer
President & CEO,
The Farm Credit Council