Agricultural Finance Section / Rural Finance Authority Agricultural Development & Financial Assistance Division

The Agricultural Finance Section offers low-interest loan programs to farmers for a wide variety of activities through the Rural Finance Authority.

The Rural Finance Authority (RFA) partners with local lenders to provide affordable credit to eligible farmers. Loan participations are purchased by the RFA under the following programs: The Basic Farm and Seller-Assisted help younger and beginning farmers purchase ag land; Agricultural Improvement finances improvements to the farm for any ag related purpose, such as grain handling facilities, machine storage and manure systems; Restructure II is to help farmers reorganize their farm debt to improve cash flow; and Livestock Expansion creates affordable financing for new state-of-the-art livestock production facilities. Over $150 million has been invested in 2,290 participations by the RFA in these programs.

The Aggie Bond Program creates a federal tax exemption for banks and a federal and state tax exemption on interest income to an individual seller in exchange for offering below market interest rates to eligible beginning farmers to purchase farm real estate, agricultural improvements, breeding livestock and machinery. Two hundred seventy-nine farmers have benefited on over $39 million loans.

Revolving accounts have been established to support certain loan activities. The RFA has provided over $81.4 million in loans to 154 lower equity farmers to purchase stock in cooperatives that own and operate value-added agricultural processing facilities. The Livestock Equipment Pilot Loan Program is designed to help finance the first purchase of livestock-related equipment and make livestock facilities improvements. The Sustainable Agriculture and Manure digester loan programs are administered jointly by the Ag Finance and Ag Resources Management and Development Divisions.