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Farm Credit Centennial Celebration

Floor Speech

Date: July 6, 2016
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Finance and Banking Agriculture and Food

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Mr. WELCH. Mr. Speaker, as we near the 100th anniversary of the Farm Credit System, I rise today to commend the cooperative owners and the employees of the Farm Credit System for their continuing service in meeting the credit and financial-services needs of rural communities and agriculture.

I was pleased to cosponsor House Resolution 591, commemorating the Farm Credit System's centennial. The Farm Credit System was established by Congress through the Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916, signed into law on July 17, 1916, by President Woodrow Wilson. Congress designed the Farm Credit System as a permanent means to support the well-being and prosperity of the Nation's rural communities and agricultural producers of all types and sizes.

The State of Vermont is served by Yankee Farm Credit, which provides more than $400 million in loans to more than 1,000 Vermont members, as well as financial-services such as recordkeeping, payroll, income tax preparation, consulting, appraisal, and crop insurance.

Nationwide the Farm Credit System provides more than $237 billion in loans to more than 500,000 members.

Yankee Farm Credit is involved in the agricultural community throughout Vermont, working with Vermont's Agency of Agriculture and other organizations and agencies such as the Vermont Agricultural Credit Corporation, the University of Vermont Extension Service, and the USDA's Farm Service Agency. Yankee Farm Credit supports youth in agriculture. Yankee Farm Credit together with CoBank has provided more than $10,000 in grants each to 4-H and FFA in the past three years.

Congress designed the Farm Credit System as a network of cooperatives, independently owned and controlled by its borrowers. The cooperative governance model, whereby directors are accountable to the rest of the membership is an important tenet of the Farm Credit System.

Farm Credit has demonstrated its commitment to its customer owners in Vermont for a century, and we look forward to its continued commitment for the next one hundred years.

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