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Congress Could Unlock Billions of Dollars for Local Food Systems
- Bob Benenson
- 22 hours ago
- 4 min read
Why Lawmakers Must Press Farm Credit to Do Its Job to Help Farmers
This article was submitted by Bob Heuer of HNA Networks, a frequent contributor to Local Food Forum. The opinions expressed in the article are those of the author. Bob’s bio is at the end of the article.
“Farm Credit Continues to Fulfill Mission of Supporting Young, Beginning and Small Farmers,” read the headline of an August 17 news release.
This dubious claim came from Farm Credit Council — the Washington lobbyist for America’s largest agricultural lender. Their truth-spinning came in response to a federal regulator’s report to Congress.
Nothing new about Farm Credit System misleading Congress. Created through a 1916 federal law, Farm Credit was later directed to document its record for supplying credit and “related services” to emerging farmer populations.
This subset of farmers was categorized as “Young, Beginning and Small.” Or YBS for short.
Why B.S? Because They Can
That Congressional mandate was established in 1980. How well Farm Credit serves YBS farming demographics’ needs was supposed to be made clear through annual reports.
Twenty-one years passed before Farm Credit and Farm Credit Administration — its regulator — got around to establishing metrics to gauge performance. And so began another two-decade-long dodge.
For years, the regulator’s annual report included a caveat about new loan numbers for young, beginning and small farmers. In effect, the regulator told Congress not to trust our numbers. One loan could be counted up to three times for a young, beginning and small farmer.
This double- and triple-counting charade ended in 2024. That’s the first report to capture seven possible combinations of young, beginning and small borrower status.
This newly released 2025 report led me to reach out to the federal regulator. A spokesman emailed me to say the seven categories allow the agency “to analyze transactions without double counting. These more accurate data strengthen (the) monitoring and examination of” Farm Credit’s YBS programming.
Delivering on 1980 Congressional Directive
Congress asked for honest record keeping 46 years ago. Today, Farm Credit and its regulator are revealing a new sleight of hand.
This latest report shows that last year Farm Credit System made 175,068 new loans to YBS farmers. Those numbers represent 56.3 percent of all new Farm Credit loans, totaling $38.2 billion.
What Farm Credit doesn’t say is how it remains a federally-subsidized money machine for large commodity growers and agrifood conglomerates. After all, that $38.2 billion in YBS loans represent a mere 8.3 percent of total loan volume.
Equally misleading are Farm Credit System’s numbers on its performance on congressionally mandated services. In exchange for its federal subsidies, Farm Credit is supposed to help prepare new farmer populations to become creditworthy.
Last year, spending for educational programming, grants, scholarships, marketing, outreach, etc. totaled $46 million.
Nobody could dispute that those resources helped a few people become better farmers. But it’s also true that $46 million represents an embarrassing 0.575% of Farm Credit’s total profits in 2025.
Does Congress Care?
Farm Credit System is supposed to be serving “all…eligible” YBS populations, according a 2023 regulator report: “Underserved communities and groups can be overlooked or excluded from marketing efforts and education outreach, leaving out a potential borrowing base.”
Also in 2023, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report that assessed the potential of a Farm Credit-funded grant program for YBS farmers. GAO noted that Congress requires another government sponsored enterprise — the Federal Home Loan (FHL) Banks — to invest 10 percent of annual profits for an affordable housing program.
FHLBanks say the three-decade-old program is a great success. But GAO authors didn’t talk to anyone at FHLBanks. They did talk to Farm Credit officials who said a funding requirement would be a terrible idea.
Congress can address this shortcoming in the federal Farm Bill that will be considered by the U.S. Senate in September. A Republican-drafted Farm Bill proposal failed in committee on August 6 due largely to Democrats opposed to pushing food assistance program costs to the state and local levels.
Well-resourced local food systems are part of the solution. Yet, as a Congressional staffer once observed to me, local and regional food systems can never scale unless “Farm Credit System does the job it was created by Congress to do.”
A funding requirement is the answer. Nothing else will compel the Farm Credit System financing giant to address the full range of needs for all young, beginning and small farmers in the U.S.
For more information on this topic, check out these articles that I posted recently on Local Food Forum:
Bob Heuer is director of HNA Networks, an Evanston, Illinois based consultancy that supports the growth and development of regional farm and food economies. Last month, the National Association of Counties (NACo) adopted a “Good Food For All” policy authored by HNA Networks for Will County, Illinois board members. The NACo policy urges neighboring counties to collaborate on funding strategies to grow local food systems. From 2004 to 2011, Bob consulted for Farm Credit’s Washington lobbyist, the Farm Credit Council. He can be reached at bob@hnanetworks.net
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