Sheena Brown - Farm Credit Fellow

Sheena Brown of Derby, VT worked in the Middlebury office the week of May 21-25 for her one week internship for the Farm Credit Fellow program. Sheena is an animal science major with a concentration in business at the University of Vermont. She is part of the VTC/UVM FARMS 2+2 program and will graduate in May 2013 with a Bachelors of Science. Sheena was raised on a dairy farm in Derby and has worked on a neighboring farm for 6 years. In the future Sheena hopes to own a farm in Vermont.

Abby Scholten - Farm Credit Fellow

Abby Scholten of Weybridge, VT visited the St. Albans office the week of June 4-8 as part of the Farm Credit Fellows program.  Abby’s family has an 80 cow organic dairy in Weybridge where they turn the milk from their Holsteins and Dutch Belts into farmstead cheese.  Their popular cheese, “Weybridge”, is marketed through the Cellars at Jasper Hill.  Abby graduated with an Associate’s degree in Dairy Farm Management from Vermont Technical College.  She is part of the VTC/UVM FARMS 2+2 program and has just finished up her junior year at the University of Vermont.

Farm Credit Fellows

We are pleased to have the opportunity to take part in the Farm Credit Fellows program again this year.  Fellows spend a week in a Farm Credit office learning about ag lending.  Farm Credit offices throughout New York and New England are involved in this valuable program.  Yankee has hosted two Fellows students so far this year and another will come later in the summer.

The one-week internship program has 23 students this year from the University of Vermont, the University of Maine, and Cornell University.  While visiting a Farm Credit office students are learning about the relationship between lenders and members, understanding financials, and how understanding the numbers can help you run a better business.

The students from the University of Vermont are pictured below at their spring trip to Farm Credit East in Enfield, CT.

University of Vermont - 2012 Farm Credit Fellows

From Left to Right:  Abby Scholten, Rick Brisson, Sheena Brown

The three Fellows that will be visiting Yankee Farm Credit are:

Sheena Brown - Middlebury, May 21-25

Abby Scholten - St. Albans, June 4-8

Stephen Gould - Newport, August 5-12

For more info on the Farm Credit Fellows program contact Kelly Richardson in the Newport office.

Kueffner Kows @ Cowtown

On Tuesday, June 12, 2012 a large crowd gathered for the dispersal of a great herd of Holstein cattle. Ernie Kueffner and his family from Connecticut hosted the event at Cowtown Holsteins in Derby, VT. Hundreds of people from both sides of the border were on hand to get a chance at purchasing some of the best Holstein genetics in the world. Approximately 150 lots were sold with a sale average of $17,685. The high seller was Rainyridge Talent Barbara EX-95 EEEEE at $230,000.

The event started Monday evening with a pig roast and live band hosted by St. Jacobs ABS Inc. to preview the cattle for the sale. Tuesday kicked off with breakfast from 8-10 AM hosted by Taurus Service and provided by the Northeast Kingdom Holstein Club. The auction started at 10 AM and wrapped up at about 3:30 PM. Lunch was also provided by the Northeast Kingdom Holstein Club.

Loan Officer Kelly Richardson from our Newport office was on hand to make pancakes and flip burgers for the day. AVP/Branch Manager Loren Petzoldt, also from our Newport office, was able to make it to watch the sale.

See Holstein World’s All Breeds Blog for photos and more info about this once-in-a-lifetime event.

Thanks to Kelly Richardson for the above report about this event.

Promotion - Clara Hall

I am pleased to announce that Clara Hall has been promoted from Credit Analyst to Loan Officer in our White River Jct. office. Clara joined us two years ago following graduation from Cornell University with a BS in animal science. She has passed the Assistant Tax Specialist exams 1A and 1B and the Tax Specialist exam.

In addition to her regular duties these past two years, Clara created and maintains Yankee Farm Credit's page on Facebook.

Please join me in congratulating Clara!

We will soon be posting a credit analyst position in our White River Jct. office.

SVP/Chief Credit Officer

SVP/Chief Credit Officer Bill Heath has announced his retirement this fall. His last day in the office will be August 31st.

Bill has worked for Farm Credit for 28 years. He graduated from UVM in 1977 with a BS in business administration. After farming for a few years with his brother-in-law, he was hired in 1984 as a credit representative by the Watertown, New York association, now part of Farm Credit East. In 1985 Bill transferred to the Newport office of the Connecticut Valley association, one of the predecessor associations of Yankee Farm Credit, eventually becoming the manager of that branch and chief appraiser of the association. In 1995 Bill moved to the White River Jct. office to become VP/Branch Manager there. Bill was promoted to SVP/Regional Manager in 2005, and to SVP/Chief Credit Officer in 2006.

Bill has been a significant factor in Yankee's success over the years, and especially during the downturn of 2008-2010. He will be greatly missed.

Bill, congratulations on this milestone. We wish all the best for you in the next stage of life. Don't be a stranger.

We have posted a job opening for SVP/Chief Credit Officer. Details on our web site: Career Opportunities.

Thoughts on "Slow"

In the previous two posts I wrote about the Slow Living Summit in Brattleboro last week and why this is important for Yankee Farm Credit to think about.

But what exactly should we think about it? In this post I share some personal thoughts on that question, and I propose a new concept: SLOW Government.

Not everyone in agriculture is persuaded by the philosophy of Slow. Vermont agriculture is overwhelmingly dairy, mostly non-organic dairy. More than half of our loan portfolio at Yankee is to non-organic family dairy farmers. Most non-organic farmers are skeptical about placing too much emphasis on the philosophy of Slow. (Full disclosure: I grew up on a non-organic five-generation Vermont family dairy farm.)

Our mission at Farm Credit is to serve all of agriculture. How do we balance these competing views within the agricultural community? Almost by definition, most of agriculture is mainstream agriculture. How do we consider the philosophy of Slow without showing disregard and disrespect for mainstream agriculture?

Yankee Farm Credit is a cooperative and for us discussions about these questions will include the farmers who own Yankee; Yankee's board of directors, management and employees; and constituencies outside Yankee. The discussions that occurred at the Middlebury annual meeting earlier this year were part of these discussions. This blog is part of these discussions.

I offer the following thoughts as a contribution to these discussions. I come to these discussions both in my role as president and CEO of Yankee Farm Credit and in my role on the Vermont Agricultural and Forest Products Development Board, but I am just one of many voices in these discussions.

Like all movements, including the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Slow movement includes some good ideas and some bad ideas. Our job, whatever our role, is to separate the wheat from the chaff, the sense from the nonsense.

My approach to that job is indirect. If we start out directly talking about the sense and the nonsense of Slow, people will stake out positions, attacks will be made, defenses will go up, and little will be accomplished. I prefer to start out by talking about what is missing from Slow.

Slow Living, Slow Food and Slow Money are all part of a larger movement. The Wikipedia entry for Slow Movement lists all of these initiatives and many more. How could anything possibly be missing? And yet something important is missing.

What is missing is what I call SLOW Government.

SLOW Government is the opposite of fast government. Fast government seeks to use the power of government to solve more and more of life's problems, resulting in more laws, more regulations, more government programs, more government bureaucracy. SLOW Government first asks the question: Is this a necessary and proper function of government? In a country founded on the principle of limited government, this is a question that we too often fail to ask.

The inspiration for SLOW Government came from one of the principles of Slow Money: "There is such a thing as money that is too fast, companies that are too big, finance that is too complex." (source) I believe that there is such a thing as government that is too fast, too big, and too complex.

A good way to think about SLOW Government is as an acronym, which is why it is capitalized:

S is for sustainable. Primarily I am referring to government finances. Current policies are not sustainable. Cash outflows cannot indefinitely exceed cash inflows. Unfunded promises of future benefits put the sustainability of government itself at risk. Debt cannot increase without limit. We in Farm Credit have some experience in this area. We have experience with borrowers, of course. Not all borrowers succeed; some fail. We also have our own experience. At present the Farm Credit System is highly successful, but the Farm Credit System itself has had several near-death experiences in its long and storied history. We in Farm Credit have some basis for speaking to the issue of what is sustainable and what is not when it comes to finances.

L is for local. Government should be kept as local as possible. We can learn much from Alexis de Tocqueville. This blog has two posts about Alexis de Tocqueville's views on the importance of local government, using New York and China as examples.

O is for organic. In this context I mean something similar to what businesses mean by "organic growth." Organic growth in business is natural, internal growth—as opposed to growth from acquisitions. A corresponding meaning in the context of government is growth that is natural—as opposed to growth from stimulus. In short, organic government is Hayekian, not Keynesian. This blog has two posts about the philosophies of Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes: the rap version and the non-rap version.

W is for wise. Here I am referring to wisdom in the sense of this proverb from Lao Tzu, the founder of Daoism (or Taoism if you prefer): "To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, subtract things every day." (source) Our political leaders are full of knowledge, and they have added so many things to government that it has become unmanageable. No one can understand the Byzantine complexity of the endless laws, regulations, programs, agencies, departments, boards, etc. that constitute our government. We need political leaders who are rich in wisdom, who will subtract things from government until it is once again manageable.

One of the intellectual fathers of the Slow Movement is Henry David Thoreau. His influential 1849 essay "Civil Disobedience" begins with this sentence:

I heartily accept the motto,—"That government is best which governs least;" and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically.

That summarizes what I mean by SLOW Government.

In 2010 I started talking about SLO Agriculture - for Sustainable, Local, and/or Organic Agriculture. (source) Now we need to start talking about SLOW Government - for Sustainable, Local, Organic, and Wise Government. I am not advocating for NO government. I am advocating for government that is more Sustainable, more Local, more Organic, and Wiser than our current government. SLOW Government would be good for agriculture, good for rural America, and good for the country.

The Farm Credit System has been around for nearly 100 years. We are a significant part of the history of financing the production end of the food system, and we will be a significant part of the future—for all of agriculture.

Why is "Slow" important for Yankee?

In the previous post I wrote about the Slow Living Summit in Brattleboro last week. What does this have to do with Yankee Farm Credit?

Much of Slow Living is about Slow Food. I have written several posts on this blog about a related concept that I call SLO agriculture - sustainable, local, and/or organic agriculture. Many Yankee members are involved in SLO agriculture.

How many? There is no standard definition for "sustainable" or "local" so it is only possible to discuss these categories qualitatively, not quantitatively. I would guess, however, that nearly 100% of our members consider themselves both sustainable and involved in local food markets. Others may have a different view, but even under the most stringent definitions a significant number of Yankee members are involved in sustainable and/or local agriculture.

There is a standard definition for "organic" - a farm is either certified organic under USDA's National Organic Program or it is not. Nationally 0.7% of farms are organic. (Source: 14,450 organic farms from the 2008 Organic Survey divided by 2.2 million total farms from the 2007 Census of Agriculture.) In Yankee's loan portfolio 6% of customers and 5% of loan volume are certified organic. This is small but growing, and much more significant in Yankee's territory than in many other areas of the country.

Another aspect of Slow Living is Slow Money, which relates to the business of investing and lending money, especially involving food systems. Congress created the Farm Credit System specifically to provide debt capital to the production end of the nation's food systems. The Farm Credit System is nearly 100 years old and is a huge success. In Yankee's territory we provide $400 million of financing to 1,300 customers. Our territory includes all of Vermont and six neighboring counties in New Hampshire and New York. In Vermont alone we provide $250 million of financing to 1,000 customers. We are by far the largest provider of credit to agriculture in our territory. The next two largest providers, and valued partners with Yankee, are the Vermont Agricultural Credit Corporation and USDA's Farm Service Agency. Together they provide about half of the financing that Yankee Farm Credit provides in Vermont.

In addition to all of the above, Vermont seems to be a focal point for much of the activity around the emerging philosophy of Slow. Since 2010 Vermont has been host to two Slow Living Summits and a Slow Money National Gathering. The University of Vermont has adopted food systems as one of its three Spires of Excellence. And there has been a great deal of entrepreneurial activity in Vermont around this movement (example).

Taking all of these things together, I cannot think of many issues that are more directly related to the mission of Yankee Farm Credit.

Where does mainstream agriculture fit into this discussion? After all, mainstream agriculture is our core business. How do we balance mainstream agriculture and SLO agriculture? Some thoughts on that in the next post.

Slow Living Summit

The second annual Slow Living Summit was held May 30-June 1 in Brattleboro, VT. More than 350 people attended. Yankee Farm Credit was a sponsor, and I was a participant. Speakers included Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. The Summit was organized by Orly Munzing and the Strolling of the Heifers organization. The 11th annual Strolling of the Heifers was held in Brattleboro immediately following the Slow Living Summit. Thousands of people attend the world-famous Strolling of the Heifers each year.

What is Slow Living? The following short explanation is from the program brochure:

We would define "slow living" as the intention to build a more reflective, balanced future respecting each other and our life-sustaining natural environment - seeking common solutions for the common good.

In short, Slow Living is a metaphor for sustainability. Click here for a longer explanation.

In one of the many breakout sessions I participated in a panel discussion led by Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Chuck Ross about "collaboration between the public, private and quasi public/private entities around vision, planning, programs and activities to help develop and sustain an agriculturally based local food system." Other participants on the panel included Ela Chapin, director of the Vermont Farm Viability Program at the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board; Paul Costello, executive director of the Vermont Council on Rural Development; and Ryan Torres, philanthropic advisor at the Vermont Community Foundation.

The Slow Living Summit ran for an evening and two full days. I counted five general sessions and more than 50 breakout sessions in the program brochure.

Articles about the Summit from the Brattleboro Reformer 6/02/12:

Slow Living Summit gets off to fast start
Gov. Shumlin praises 'slow living' advocates

Related posts:

Why is "Slow" important for Yankee?
Thoughts on "Slow"