Stressed Producers

Randy Dickhut, senior vice president of real estate operations at Farmers National Company was talking with me about land values, current and past, and described circumstances under which the owners of farmland might consider selling their assets. "Farmers don't usually sell land, only if they have to or to trade in for better land. Right now the main sellers of land are the inheritors. They may have owned the land for sometime, maybe more recently and that family typically, family ownership is deciding to sell the farm after they inherited from the estate or a trust. That is the main bulk of the sellers. Will there be a little bit more? The decline in the working capital of farmers is the concern of themselves and lenders from those peak good years in the earlier to thousands until now there has been a huge decline in working capital. They have to pay loans and buy new equipment and living expenses and so forth. That is a concern and I think we are much better situated now than in 1980s overall. there is no expectation of a crisis but there will be pockets of stressed producers for sure.