Company: AGM-PH
Filing Date: 2025-02-21
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000845877-25-000033
Chunk: 206

Company: FEDERAL AGRICULTURAL MORTGAGE CORP
Filing Date: 2025-02-21
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 7
Chunk 206
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 trade policies, environmental regulations, and immigration laws could result in significant impacts on agricultural producers and the sector as a whole. These changes could lead to both favorable and unfavorable conditions, influencing trade dynamics, the strength of the U.S. dollar, labor costs and availability, and regulatory frameworks. The agricultural sector may experience varying degrees of disruption and adaptation in response to these evolving policies, and these changes could increase the volatility of sector profitability in the near-term.

Lower prices for several agricultural commodities could have multiple competing effects on loan performance and agricultural credit demand. Constraints on cash flow can cause loan delinquency rates to rise back to and surpass historical averages. This reversion is most likely in commodities experiencing negative market conditions like some grain and permanent crops. Simultaneously, cash flow constraints can increase demand for debt capital to reorganize balance sheets and replace lost incomes. Farmer Mac believes that its portfolio and market strategy is sufficiently diversified by borrower, industry, and region to maintain robust portfolio performance through the current cycle to be positioned to support any expansion of the farm mortgage market that may arise in the coming quarters.

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Land Values

Record-setting farm incomes in 2021 and 2022, combined with historically low interest rates in 2020 and 2021, drove a rapid rise in land values and a decrease in farm delinquencies and bankruptcies. Momentum for farmland values persisted throughout 2023 due to high levels of farm liquidity and a constrained supply of farmland for sale. Land values slowed in some markets in 2024 due to higher interest rates and lower profitability for some agricultural sectors. Land value survey data from the USDA shows a 5% increase in average farm real estate values from June 2023 to June 2024. Annual farm real estate value gains were highest in the Southeast (9.4%) and the Southern Plains (7.5%) and still strong but slowing in the Lake states (4.3%), the Corn Belt (3.7%), and the Southeast (2.4%). 

Farmland value growth rates moderated in the second half of 2024 in the face of continued higher market interest rates and stagnating price for some commodities. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago AgLetter reported no change in farmland values in the Seventh District (primarily Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin) between October 2023 and October 2024. This was down from a 5% increase over the previous 12-month period. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City showed that land values continued