FCS Financial: One Hundred Years July 2016 | Page 65

Darrell Skipper, vice president of the Chillicothe Production
Credit Association, started in his hometown office in June of
1975 where his first request was to have an electric typewriter. He
remembers when they got their first copy machine, “Back then
we used lots of carbon paper.” The upside to all that handwritten
paperwork was the closeness Darrell felt with his member-owners’
operations. “We had a very close partnership with people, keeping
track of their livestock inventories, doing cash flows, and monitoring
those pretty closely, particularly during the 1980s,” said Darrell.
“Chillicothe had a grain elevator that went out of business in the early
1980s and that affected eleven or twelve customers that had grain in
the elevator. He left town and they never got paid. That was one of the
more stressful situations I’d been through. There wasn’t anything we
could do about it.” That situation would replay itself many times over
in the coming decade.
At the beginning of 1980, the Farm Credit System was a $57
billion cooperative and Governor Don Wilkinson predicted it would
pass the $100 billion mark in loans by 1985. Farmers now made
up 4 percent of the U.S. population with assets hitting the $950
billion mark, up 16 percent from the previous year, a reflection of
the additional acreage purchased during the 1970s. Unfortunately,
Farming magazine was already predicting a downturn in the farm
financial picture due primarily to inflation. Net farm income was
expected to drop from around $32 billion in 1979 to around $25
billion for 1980.

The sign goes up as a
finishing touch to the new
Jefferson City office, 1980.

Bob Idel, current vice president of
insurance, then worked in the Jefferson
City Production Credit Association office
and saw firsthand how the drop in land
values impacted farmers. “It affected their
operating loan before it really hindered the
long-term loans. Historically people have
pulled their payments for the real estate
loans out of their operating credit or their
own cash flow. So the short term situation
deteriorated faster than the long-term.”

The Perfect Storm

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