Supporting Small & Medium Sized Farms

Supporting Small & Medium Sized Farms. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture.

Some time back a comment was made to me about all farming operations being giant factory farms. I was a bit shocked and asked the person if they had actually driven out in the country lately. Small and mid-sized farms are still very much a way of life here in the U.S. and many young people are getting into the business. Michael Scuse is the USDA Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services and he talks about how USDA will provide more access to capital to small and mid-sized farmers and ranchers.

SCUSE: There's several things that are being offered but one of the things that we started two years ago was our micro loan program. This was a program that we started here at USDA to get the smaller producers involved in agriculture. They're loans up to $35-thousand dollars and we actually cut the paperwork in half.

Scuse says the farm bill is allowing even more and higher loan amounts.

SCUSE: What the farm bill did for us though, the farm bill actually expanded this program. They saw how successful it was and now when we get the process through, the regulatory process completed we're going to be able to provide loans up to $50-thousand dollars for some of our producers.

That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.