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market-farming - Re: Help!!!! Loans?????

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  • From: Vint Lawrence <vlawrence AT nets.com>
  • To: market farming <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Help!!!! Loans?????
  • Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 07:53:43 -0700




Tom wrote:

> Any of you have any good sources for farm loans,,,being farmers it is hard
> to get big city banks to understand us???
> Thannks from the bottom of my Peapickin Heart
> Tom

Tom, Vic, and Pat,
Where are you located?
It is precisely for this reason that a group of us have been in the process
(almost
completed) of forming the Permaculture Credit Union in Santa Fe, NM.
Once we are open, it will be some time before we will be allowed by the
regulators to
make business loans and agriculture loans.
However, depending upon your location, you might try approaching local credit
unions (you
must be a shareholder(depositor) to get a loan from a credit union). Many
credit unions
were formed originally by farmers and they may be more sympathetic to what
you are doing
and how it fits with their purposes.
Banks may be viewed as any other resource extractive industry - i.e. - they
take the
surplus production (bank profit) from a community and export it to their
investors who
now usually are not members of the community. Credit Unions, by contrast, are
owned by
their depositors and return the productivity of the community to the
community in the
form of dividends paid to the depositors and/or lower loan rates and higher
interest
rates on deposits.
Another possibility is to set up a revolving loan fund with your friends and
community
members. The point of this is to have the community that surrounds you be
committed to
your success.
A third possibility is to approach the economic development officer in your
county and
see if their are funds and/or resources available in the public sector that
will support
you in what you want to achieve.

Let us know more about where you are and what it is you are attempting to do.

Vint Lawrence






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