Banker Calls for New Farm Bill Approach

January 4, 2001

Terry Jorde, president and CEO of CountryBank USA, a $35 million dollar bank in rural North Dakota, told President-elect George W. Bush to recommend a farm policy "sooner rather than later," that provides more income to farmers when prices decline and that provides greater stability and risk management tools "so that ag producers and rural communities can plan for a future."

Jorde also is a member of the Independent Community Bankers Association of America, a national trade association representing 5,300 community banks nationwide, and a former chairman of ICBA's Ag-Rural America Committee and currently chairman of the Community Banking Network, ICBA's for-profit services subsidiary.

Her remarks came Wednesday in Austin, TX, where Bush held an economic summit. Jorde said the "bottom has dropped out of revenues and costs of production have soared, creating massive losses of equity in farms and small businesses." Supplemental federal aid and disaster assistance and crop insurance "are holding up land values throughout rural America providing collateral on loans to thousands of community banks."

Jorde said she believes rural areas are "at the point of crisis. There comes a point where populations of communities can fall below a critical mass and become destined for an irreversible decline, lacking the human resources and human leadership to remain viable. The per capita cost of providing services becomes too expensive."

Rural America has the potential to be a great asset to our overcrowded urban areas in the United States, "but we need time and help in diversifying our economic base, by providing incentives for job development, connecting rural America by bridging the digital divide and by focusing on new ways for rural community banks to access equity capital for rural business start-ups and expansions," Jorde added.