Page 13 - Membership Guide

COLORADO’S FARM CREDIT SYSTEM
REPORT BY BERT ELY
The Farm Credit System:
Its operations nationally and n Colorado
i

PRODUCED IN PARTNERSHIP

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY needed, and certainly would not be created
today, it continues to grow as it pushes
The Farm Credit System, the first government further and further into non-agricultural
sponsored enterprise (GSE), was created lending, including providing credit to large,
almost a century ago to finance farm investor-owned enterprises hardly in need of
mortgages that most commercial banks were taxpayer-subsidized financing. The time has
either barred by law from providing or were come for Congress to rein in the FCS.
too small to safely finance. Over time that
rationale faded away as commercial banks KEY HIGHLIGHTS
grew in size and were empowered to finance
agricultural real estate. The FCS gets tax money to compete with
you – and that’s not its only advantage.
Over the years Congress also granted the
FCS broader lending powers, enabling it to • If the FCS was a commercial banking
become a nearly $300 billion behemoth, company, it would be the eighth-largest
larger than almost every bank in the United banking company in the United States – and
States. Even though the FCS is no longer it’s still subsidized by taxpayers

CBA STAFF
DON CHILDEARS don@coloradobankers.org
President/CEO

JENIFER WALLER jenifer@coloradobankers.org
Senior Vice President

AMANDA AVERCH averch@coloradobankers.org
Director of Communication
MIKE BINTNER mike@coloradobankers.org
Director of Membership

LINDSAY MUNIZ lindsay@coloradobankers.org
Executive Assistant