The credit crunch is trickling down to the farm as agricultural lenders tighten credit standards, leaving some farmers short of money to feed their animals or put in crops as the planting season nears its end. Full Story »
Posted by Derek Hawkins
This article acurate reflects that there is a credit shortage in the farming area, but the reasons go much deeper than the simple answers the WSJ trys to put forth. Credit has always been tight in the agribuisines, Each time there is a credit crunch in ag, the Wall St people sweep in and take over resulting in more bad management, since there are way to many variables for most of them to cope with. This is more of a heads up to those with cash that now is the time to buy up the farms you can, because the farmers are getting fed up with the uncertainty.
One of the reasons I sold my farm(inherited) was the woeful lack of income per acre, meaning that in order to make a liviving you would need thousands of acres and not just 40. Wells Fargo should not even be in the farm lending business, the reason the Farm bureaus, The Farm Credit System, Farm Service Agency was to stop the preditory lending for land grab by unscupulus banks.