The senior vice president with First National Bank Omaha says the recent interest rate cut might help improve the bottom line for farmers.
Barry Benson says the quarter-percent drop could lower expenses on certain operating loans and provides producers with an opportunity. “As producers are looking forward to 2026, if they haven’t already locked in input costs, that might be a good idea for them so they will know what their costs are and if they’re seeing some easing in their market it might be ok to wait a little bit, but at least we have a better idea now on what rates will be and we can put that into our projected cash flows.”
He tells Brownfield that rising input costs have forced many farmers to rely more heavily on credit. “Year-over-year in the last two years, we’ve seen an increase because farmers have lost a little bit of money and not as much as liquidity as they had coming into this downturn.”
Benson says there is still some uncertainty if rates will continue to drop in 2026 depending on potential leadership changes at the Federal Reserve and priorities from the Trump administration.
