FCS Financial: One Hundred Years July 2016 | Page 75

Another part of the 1985 act was the Conservation Reserve
Program (CRP) still in operation to this day. Under the program,
farmers set aside portions of their farmland and let it grow in
conservation, receiving government payment for participating.
“The farmers were able to get sixty to seventy dollars an acre
annual payment for their crop land that they didn’t have to do
anything to but maybe just mow,” Darrell Skipper explained. “It
made the payments on the land and made it possible for us to avoid
foreclosure.”
Starting in 1985 the Farm Credit System in Missouri and other
states began taking measures to ensure their survival. They began
consolidating offices and closing others in order to reduce expenses
for both facilities and personnel. Association presidents were
summoned to St. Louis for evaluations. After two days of grueling
oral and written tests, their results were sent back to the association
directors. They were told approximately one-third of them would
remain to interview with the twelve surviving area associations.
In 1986, the Federal Land Bank Associations and Production
Credit Associations went under common management to pool
resources and cut costs, though they remained separate legal
entities. To further protect the associations, the Federal Land Bank
Association pooled all the capital into one district bank, the Federal
Land Bank of St. Louis. The associations essentially became agents for
the FLB of St. Louis and were referred to as service centers.
An article in the January/February 1986 issue of Farming
announced the system had repaid all its government capital and had,
for more than seventeen years, been operating as a fully borrowerowned cooperative, a fact of which everyone was extremely proud.
Despite that accomplishment, the state of affairs in the agriculture
industry meant budgets and operating costs had to be kept down if
they were to remain a sustainable source of credit for farm families.
However difficult a task it was, the association was forced to lay off a
number of employees for the first time in recent decades. Hopefully,
it would make them a stronger, more competitive organization when
the agricultural economy was restored.

The Perfect Storm

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