Ralph Robertson says his bank is every bit as important to the success of his farm as the seed he sows, the tractors he drives and the cooperation of Mother Nature.
The 54-year-old Carroll County farmer learned that more than 25 years ago, when the local bank with which he had been doing business turned its back on him because agriculture was going through a period of financial difficulty.
When times were good, he said, the commercial bank served his money needs.
"But in the mid-'70s, when times were tough for farmers, the bank shifted its focus," Robertson said. "It was more into retail lending and mortgage lending. It avoided agriculture."
Robertson remembers walking out of the commercial bank and making his way to the Farm Credit office in Westminster.
"We sat down, I spread my papers out on the desk and we made a deal," the grain and livestock farmer said yesterday while leaning against the big rear wheel of his John Deere tractor during a break from stacking bales of hay.
"I've been with Farm Credit ever since. They understand economic conditions on the farm. They understand when we have a drought. They understand agriculture."
Farm Credit, a nationwide, cooperative banking system, owned by the farmers it serves, was established by Congress in 1917 to provide farmers with a dependable lender to finance land purchases, said J. Robert Frazee, president and chief executive of MidAtlantic Farm Credit.
Based in Westminster, MidAtlantic serves the bulk of Maryland's agricultural areas as well as parts of Delaware, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
It's the region's largest agriculture lender, with 9,300 customers, 60 percent of them in Maryland, and more than $1 billion in loans outstanding, according to Frazee.
"Farm Credit is vital to our farm economy," said Hagner R. Mister, Maryland's secretary of agriculture. "Their people understand farming. Most of the bank's directors have a farm background."
As a result, Mister said, the Farm Credit is not likely to oversell a loan.
"They won't talk a farmer into buying an 80-horse- power tractor when a 50-horsepower tractor will do the job, just to lend more money," he said. "They know what it's like to make the loan payment at the end of the month."
Stephen Weber, president of the Maryland Farm Bureau, an agriculture lobbying group with 14,000 members, agreed with Mister's assessment.
"We're not like everybody else," Weber said.
