Our Position

Reform and Refocus the Farm Credit System

Position

  • Farm Credit System (FCS) lenders enjoy unfair competitive advantages over rural community banks, leveraging their tax and funding advantages as government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) to siphon the best loans from community banks’ loan portfolios. The FCS’s abusive tactic of undercutting market pricing to obtain the best loans jeopardizes the viability of many community banks and the economic strength of the thousands of rural communities they serve.
  • ICBA strenuously opposes the Farm Credit Administration’s (FCA’s) initiative to allow FCS to engage in non-farm financing labeled as investments or investment bonds. This initiative is a successor to the “Rural Community Investments” proposal, which was previously withdrawn.
  • ICBA rejects legislation proposed by the Farm Credit Council to allow blanket approval authority of these FCS “investments” without FCA’s case-by-case review and approval.
  • ICBA opposes allowing FCS lenders to become the equivalent of rural banks with powers to establish checking and savings accounts, take deposits, or establish a consumer-oriented deposit insurance plan within the FCA. FCS lenders also must not have access to the Federal Reserve’s ACH system for clearing electronic credit and debit transfers.
  • ICBA opposes expansion of FCS authorities and supports legislative and regulatory provisions to ensure FCS’s adherence to its historical mission of serving bona fidefarmers and ranchers and a limited number of businesses that provide on-farm services.
  • Congress should reform the FCS’s ‘similar entity’ authorities by which FCS lenders make loans to large non-rural and publicly traded corporations.

Background

Community Banks Serve Rural America. Community banks are four times more likely to operate offices in rural counties and remain the only banking presence in over one-third of all U.S. counties. There are over 1100 agricultural banks (25 percent of portfolios in agriculture). While community banks hold 25 percent of total banking industry assets, they make nearly 90 percent of the banking industry’s farm loans.

In 2021, agricultural loans were extended by over 4,000 banks while 67 FCS institutions held agricultural loans. However, the FCS now holds 22 percent more farm loans than banks due to their rapid growth in tax-free real estate lending, which increased by 45 percent and $45 billion between 2015 to 2020, a growth rate over twice that of commercial banks. Congress should pass legislation similar to ECORA (H.R. 1977 / S. 2202) from the previous Congress (to be renamed the “Access to Credit for our Rural Economy Act of 2023” (ACRE) in the 118th Congress) to address this disparity.

Farm Credit System. As the only GSE competing directly against private lenders the FCS was granted tax and funding advantages by Congress to serve bona-fidefarmers and ranchers and a narrow group of farm-related businesses that provide on-farm services.

Through its regulator, the FCS has sought non-farm lending opportunities through “investment bonds” even though such lending exceeds the constraints of the Farm Credit Act. The FCS also seeks blanket authority to approve their “investments” in lieu of obtaining their regulator’s approval. ICBA opposes granting the FCS’s blanket approval authorities.

Congress should reform and refocus the FCS’s authorities in order to limit FCS’s non-farm and non-statutory lending.

Staff Contact

Mark K. Scanlan

SVP, Agriculture and Rural Policy

ICBA

[email protected]

Ag News

ICBA Asks Farm Credit System Regulator to Explain CoBank Loan to Verizon

Oct. 22, 2013

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Tax-advantaged FCS lender makes $725 million loan to Verizon in Vodafone buyout

Washington, D.C. (Oct. 22, 2013)—The Independent Community Bankers of America® (ICBA) yesterday expressed alarm that Farm Credit System (FCS) lender CoBank, a $90 billion bank for cooperatives, was significantly involved in a $12 billion loan to Verizon Communications to purchase Vodafone’s stake in Verizon Wireless. In a letter to the FCS’s regulator, the Farm Credit Administration (FCA), ICBA President and CEO Camden R. Fine noted that Verizon and Vodafone are multinational telecommunications firms, hardly candidates for tax-advantaged financing from a government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) that provides credit and other services to agricultural producers and farmer-owned cooperatives.

“On its face, CoBank’s involvement appears to be an effort to leverage their GSE status deeply into the realm of multi-national, non-agricultural, non-rural and non-cooperative corporate financial deals,” Fine wrote. “This is not the purpose for which CoBank was created as part of the Farm Credit System.”

In ICBA’s letter to the FCA, Fine noted that Securities and Exchange Commission documents show that CoBank is financing $725 million of the global telecom buyout, the largest amount of any lender. Vodafone, a multinational telecommunications company headquartered in London, is the world’s second-largest mobile telecommunications company in terms of revenues and subscribers. Verizon Communications, headquartered in New York City, recently reported a third-quarter profit of $2.2 billion and revenues of more than $30 billion.

“This is a clear breach of FCS lending authority and a misuse of the taxpayer-backed GSE’s implicit subsidies,” Fine said today. “The FCS has for years worked to expand its lending authority to use its government-sponsored subsidies to compete with rural community banks. This egregious loan for a major telecommunications industry buyout between large multi-national corporations located in two of the world’s largest cities is the latest example of unjustifiable mission creep and hardly represents a rural loan.”

About ICBA
The Independent Community Bankers of America®, the nation’s voice for nearly 7,000 community banks of all sizes and charter types, is dedicated exclusively to representing the interests of the community banking industry and its membership through effective advocacy, best-in-class education and high-quality products and services. For more information, visit www.icba.org.