Banks that serve U.S. farmers are increasingly restructuring existing loans and boosting the collateral needed for new ones as the numbers of late and missed payments have risen, Bloomberg News reported. While regional banks are healthy, they’re clearly boosting their defenses against the risks they face. In March, a report by First Midwest Bank in Chicago showed past-due agricultural loans up 287 percent in 2018 over the previous year. Meanwhile, cases handled by the Iowa Mediation Service involving farmers unable to make payments rose 20 percent. While regional banks are healthy, they’re clearly boosting their defenses against the risks they face. In March, a report by First Midwest Bank in Chicago showed past-due agricultural loans up 287 percent in 2018 over the previous year. Meanwhile, cases handled by the Iowa Mediation Service involving farmers unable to make payments rose 20 percent. Farmer bankruptcies in six Midwest states rose 30 percent to 103 in 2018, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. To hold back the tide, Farmers National Bank in Prophetstown, Illinois is restructuring more and more loans to keep growers solvent while trimming the bank’s own risk. Conditions that prompted lenders to ask for more collateral rose 2.5 percent in the fourth-quarter of 2018 from a year earlier, according to a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, which covers parts of seven states. Meanwhile, as of January 1, average interest rates on farm operating loans had edged up to 6.07 percent, its highest level since the second quarter of 2010, according to February report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Read more.
As bankruptcy rates among American farmers near record highs, U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Tina Smith (D-Minn.) reintroduced the "Family Farmer Relief Act of 2019" on March 27 to raise the chapter 12 operating debt cap to $10 million, allowing more family farmers to seek relief under the program. Click here to read the full text of S. 897.
