FCS Financial: One Hundred Years July 2016 | Page 85

In total, FCS of Missouri now consisted of twenty-eight directors
and 178 employees working in twenty-nine branch locations in 102
counties. They served 11,500 member/customers and had 20,000
outstanding loans totaling $1.1 billion in volume. The eight-member
Leadership Team was comprised of both Eastern and Western Farm
Credit employees who, collectively, represented 183 years of Farm
Credit System experience.
The annual report for 2003, the first year as FCS of Missouri,
announced the organization’s solid performance in the market
marked by positive financial results and strong credit quality.
Boosted by their new business initiatives and low interest rates, they
disbursed over $212 million in mortgage loan volume representing a
7 percent annual growth rate. The short- and i ntermediate-term loan
portfolio grew an impressive 9 percent. All this success occurred
despite drought conditions throughout most of the organization’s
102-county area, plus lower livestock and dairy prices. Just two
years later, FCS of Missouri experienced one of the largest growth
rates—9.2 percent—since the early 1990s.
Not long after the final merger created
the statewide Farm Credit Services of
Missouri and the new organization was
finding its stride, the Leadership Team
began examining its role in the agricultural
marketplace. Understanding their financing
role extended beyond just farms, agriculturerelated business, and rural home lending,
they all realized the name—Farm Credit
Services of Missouri—was inadvertently
confining the scope of their business. When
the results of the 2002 agricultural census
were in, they realized the traditional market
was disappearing. Their average member/
customer was fifty-seven years old and
thinking about transitional planning, going
into part-time farming or retiring altogether.

Statistics
The 2002 agricultural census revealed the total
number of farms in Missouri declined 3.8 percent
from 110,960 in 1997 to 106,749 in 2002. The
number of farms with sales of $250,000 or greater
declined by 5 percent while the number of farms
in the “traditional” category with sales between
$100,000 and $249,999 declined by 18 percent
to 5,271. Small farms, those with sales less than
$250,000, decreased approximately 4 percent to
102,652. These units comprise over 96 percent of
the total Missouri farm marketplace. The number
of young farmers, those younger than thirty-five
years of age, declined to 6,955, down 25 percent
from 1997.

A Lean, Mean Lending Machine

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