Last week Yankee Farm Credit entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Farm Service Agency (FSA) and the New Hampshire Department of Agriculture, Markets & Food concerning beginning farmers.
The MOU allows Yankee to make FSA guaranteed loans to qualified beginning farmers without having to charge the borrower the usual 1% FSA guarantee fee. FSA will waive the fee. This will allow these beginning farmers to keep more of their cash on the farm. A beginning farmer is a farmer who has been farming for less than 10 years.
Please pass the word! For more information please contact your local office or click here to send an e-mail.
Click here for the New Hampshire Department of Agriculture news release. First Pioneer Farm Credit was also a party to the MOU in New Hampshire.
The MOU with New Hampshire is similar to the MOU that Yankee signed with Vermont last November (see this post). Yankee closed one loan under the Vermont MOU in 2008 and two more so far in 2009.
UPDATE 2/20/09: FSA in New Hampshire has advised us that they have rescinded this MOU. They have concluded that this type of MOU "needs to be with the State, and the State needs to be doing the financing." This would preclude this type of MOU with any third party such as Farm Credit. We are not sure what this means for the MOU in Vermont. I will post updates on the blog as I learn additional information.
