Bankers: Despite Challenges This Isn’t Your Dad’s Ag Economy

Farm credit lenders see a “silver lining” in agriculture, despite the downturn of the last several years, and continuing trade and government shutdown challenges.  Frontier Farm Credit CEO Mark Jensen says while many producers feel like they are at the breaking point, the Ag economy is, thankfully, very different than the 1980s.

“If you were to have seen the situation five-years into the 1980s, the last time the farm economy had a kind of major adjustment or more challenged time, it is very different today…the overall debt load on a percentage basis is about half of what it was in the 1980s, going into this decline over the last four or five years."

AgCountry Farm Credit CEO Marc Knisley said unfortunately, some won’t survive this downturn.

“We clearly have seen some young farmers decide not to continue, we’ve seen some farmers nearing retirement, of not wanting to continue, preserve equity, the asset values are still there, de-risk a little bit.  But, for the most part, those are voluntary decisions that people are making to preserve equity.”

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