Farm Credit Services of America (FCSAmerica) welcomes more than 200 young and beginning producers to Omaha this week for our Side By Side (SXS) conference. Customers who accepted our invitation to attend this unique educational conference, will spend two days networking with fellow young and beginning farmers and ranchers and learning from industry experts on topics as diverse as financial fundamentals, family business planning and weather management.
We have hosted SXS for the past eight years as part of our commitment to young and beginning producers. The same commitment is found throughout the Farm Credit System. In 2015 alone, the Farm Credit System originated $9.4 billion in new loans to 62,000-plus young producers, defined as those 35 and younger. Beginning producers – those with 10 or few years of farming experience – represented 22 percent of new loans in 2015, totaling $12.7 billion System wide.
“Farm Credit makes extraordinary efforts to support young, beginning and small farmers and ranchers,” said Doug Stark, our CEO said in testimony before the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry in May 2016. “To put Farm Credit’s lending to small farmers and ranchers into perspective, at year-end 2015 Farm Credit had just over 1 million loans of all kinds outstanding, and slightly more than 500,000 of those loans outstanding were to small farmers and ranchers.”
Follow #SXSOmaha on Twitter, beginning Wednesday evening, to learn what advice industry experts have for young and beginning customers.
For more on how FCSAmerica and other Farm Credit Associations support young and beginning producers, read http://info.agribank.com/agrithought/Documents/AgriBank_Insights_July_YBS.pdf.
