Farm Credit Services

Farm Credit System

The Farm Credit System (Farm Credit) is a nationwide network of borrower-owned financial institutions and specialized service organizations. Farm Credit consists of five Farm Credit Banks that provide funding and affiliated services to approximately 100 locally owned Farm Credit associations and numerous cooperatives nationwide. The fundamental purpose of this network of Government-sponsored enterprises created by Congress in 1916 is to provide American Agriculture with a source of sound, dependable credit at competitive rates of interest. Farm Credit provides credit and related services to farmers, ranchers, producers and harvesters of aquatic products, rural homeowners, certain farm-related businesses, agricultural and aquatic cooperatives, rural utilities, and to certain foreign or domestic entities in connection with international agricultural credit transactions.

Farm Credit provides some $103 billion in loans to more than a half million growers, agribusiness and agricultural cooperatives, electric and telephone cooperatives, and rural utility and water systems. Overall, more than 30 percent of the credit needs of U.S. agriculture are met by Farm Credit institutions.

Today, Farm Credit institutions are organized as cooperative businesses, each owned by it's member-borrow stockholders who have the right to participate in director elections and vote on issues affecting the institution's operations.