Tag: strategic planning

Agricultural Loans and Interest Rates 2014

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The St. Louis branch of the Federal Reserve publishes quarterly reports on financial conditions pertaining to agriculture in the 8th federal reserve district which includes the northern half of Mississippi and the Delta Region.  Surveys from around the region show fixed interest rates for operating loans  averaging 5.39% on fixed loans and 5.01% on variable operating loans.  Intermediate-term loan interest rates averaged 5.65% and 5.21% for fixed and variable loans respectively. Farm real estate loans averaged 5.23% and 4.93% for fixed and variable loans.  The above interest rates were slightly higher than the same quarter a year ago where variable rates were between 4.48% for land and real estate and 4.77% for intermediate loans while fixed interest rates were as low as 4.87% for real estate loans and 5.45% for intermediate land and machinery loans.

 

Surveyed lenders expect demand for agricultural loans will be higher in 2014 than a year ago while also reporting ample quantities of loanable funds available to meet demand.  Minutes from the March meeting from the Federal Open Markets Committee were released on 9-APR-2010 where members indicated that a push to increase interest rates will not occur until at least 2015. The implication of these two conditions are that agricultural loan interest rates will remain low for all three types of loans through 2014.

Moving Your Community Forward

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As the state emerges from the most recent recession and continues to experience economic growth, it behooves individual communities to take stock of their own economic situation and follow a path to set their economic future.

One of the most effective methods of a community taking charge if its economic future is by implementing a grass-roots based economic and community development based strategic planning process that utilizes objective baseline socio-economic data to provide the community’s leaders (both elected and non-elected) with a firm foundation from which to analyze internal and external factors that affect a community’s future.

The economic development faculty within the Department of Agricultural Economic has significant experience in deriving and assembling the types of data needed to provide a clear picture to your community leaders. For further information and assistance, please contact Alan Barefield (662.325.7995; alanb@ext.msstate.edu), James Barnes (662.325.1796; barnes@agecon.msstate.edu) or Becky Smith (662.325.1793; becky.smith@msstate.edu).