My husband and I finally purchased our first piece of land about a month ago.  We have very good credit and make more than enough money to pay for our purchase so why was it so hard to get the loan with programs that are specifically set out for "young farmers"?

When we went to the bank we were met with this response:

1.  It started off on a bad foot (should have taken my business and ran) when I asked the manager if I would need to bring a business plan and he responded with "you only need that for a business...this is a farm"....and this is the guy lending our farmers money!

2.  For this young farmer program he wanted one of our farming parents to sign their entire assests over as collateral.

3.  He was going to apraise it from his desk.

4.  He wanted us to put more than $100,000 down ( we had $85,000) at our age I thought we were sitting good.

5.  He didn't think we were taking enough risks with our plans...yes this was actually said.  He believed that we should make it look as though we were taking more risk and loss so he would like us to change our business model in order to lend to us.

To say the least we did not go with "the young farmers program".  And thanks to our determination and some great agricultural banks and not agricultural banks whom were more than happy to do business with us we purchased oour first piece of land.