Risks associated with guarantees of land contracts are expected to be greater than guarantees of loans made by commercial lenders. Farmers utilizing seller-financing have greater debts, less cash flow, less equity in real estate, and less solvency than farmers utilizing regular FSA guarantees....

Results of a study completed for Congress indicate direct program borrowers are more financially stressed than guaranteed borrowers and that many current farm loan program borrowers may not be able to continue farming, at least in the short-term, without access to government subsidized credit....

Agricultural credit markets are dominated by two institutional retail lender groups, the cooperative Farm Credit System (FCS) and commercial banks. Together these two lender groups supply 70 percent of the farm sector’s total credit needs. This analysis uses USDA’s 2001 and 2002 Agricultural...

Comparisons of Farm Service Agency direct and guaranteed farm loans made from fiscal 2000 through fiscal 2003 shows that differences in performance measure between the two delivery systems are substantial, but that those differences appear to be consistent with differences in program objectives....