News

Congress funds backlog of FSA farm loans

The head of the Farm Service Agency says he’s pleased that FSA’s backlog of farm loans WILL be covered, “The continuing resolution that was passed by congress last week provided us with monies to address the farm loan program backlog that we had. We had a number of approved but unobligated farm loans in our queue.”

FSA Administrator Val Dolcini tells Brownfield it speaks to the need for credit in Rural America. He says it used to be that the FSA was knwn as the lender of last resort, “I really prefer to flip the script and consider us the lender of first opportunity, in many cases, because for a lot of our loans, you know, we are dealing with folks that have never been in a USDA office before and so they’re coming in to talk a little bit about their credit needs and what the needs of their operation might be.”

The continuing resolution will fund the government until December 9th, 2016 and Dolcini says it’ll pay for 20% of FSA’s estimated budget.

He says FSA has a record $6.3 Billion dollars in direct and guaranteed loans for 2016.