A borrower-owned cooperative lender in the Farm Credit System that makes loans to farmers, ranchers and other eligible rural borrowers.
The Farm Credit System is a network of cooperative lenders that Congress created in 1916. The Farm Credit Administration, its regulator, describes 4 banks and 55 associations. The banks raise money by selling securities in the capital markets and lend it to the associations; the associations lend to farmers, ranchers and other eligible borrowers. A farmer deals with the association.
The rules set what each kind may do. A Federal land credit association makes real estate mortgage loans with maturities of 5 to 40 years. A production credit association makes short- and intermediate-term loans, in general for up to 7 years. An agricultural credit association may do both.
For a borrower, an association is a direct competitor to a bank on farm real estate, operating lines and equipment. The OCC’s handbook says System lenders are traditionally most competitive in farm real estate because long-term bonds fund their long-term mortgages. Because an association is a cooperative, its borrowers are also its owners.
How it shows up in the data here
Farm Credit associations are not banks or credit unions. They file with the Farm Credit Administration, not the FDIC or NCUA, so they are not in the lender records on this site and none of the farm lenders lists or the farmland books ranking counts them. If you are comparing farm lenders, add the association that serves your county to whatever those pages show.
Go further
- Farm lenders by state: Banks and credit unions holding farmland loans.
- Sources: Which public files this site uses.
- Farm loan package checklist: A farm lender reads a balance sheet, a production record and a cash flow budget. The land is the collateral. The crop or the herd is the repayment, and it comes in once or twice a year.
- What to do after a bank says no to a business loan: One bank's no is one lender's answer, and the reasons are yours to ask for. They usually point to a constraint you can name.
Related terms
- Farmland loan: A loan secured by farm or ranch land and its improvements, usually made to buy or refinance the land and repaid over many years from farm income.
- Farm operating loan: A short-term loan or line that pays a farm's yearly costs, such as seed, feed, fertilizer and rent, and is repaid when the crop or livestock is sold.
- Farmer Mac: The Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation, a federally chartered company that buys and guarantees farm and rural loans from lenders so they can make more of them.
- FSA guaranteed loan: A farm loan made and serviced by a bank, credit union or Farm Credit lender, on which the USDA Farm Service Agency covers most of the lender's loss if the borrower defaults.
- Credit union: A member-owned cooperative lender. It lends to the people and businesses inside its field of membership and files a call report with NCUA every quarter.
- Non-bank lender: A non-bank lender is a company that makes loans but does not take deposits, so it is not a bank, a savings institution or a credit union.
Sources
Plain definitions for orientation, not legal, tax or credit advice. A lender's own policy decides what it will do.