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As the 1.8 million family farms in the U.S. consolidate, lenders will need to build balance sheet strength and an offering that serves clients’ various needs.
*This article appears in the third quarter 2026 issue of Bank Director magazine.
Successfully banking the nation’s roughly 1.8 million family farms — primarily small operations — requires knowledge, experience and “long-term patience,” says Rob Keil, chief credit officer at $4.9 billion Dacotah Banks in Aberdeen, South Dakota. That’s because producers, from cattle ranches to corn and soybean farmers, face good and bad years. And the bank needs to be prepared to withstand cycles with their ag customers. “Sometimes bankers end up being a consultant more than a banker,” he says. That experience can prove vital in understanding which operations are strong enough to weather the sector’s challenges, such as the dip in commodity pricing experienced by row crop farmers over the past few years.
A great team, along with a diversified loan portfolio, is critical to a successful ag banking vertical. But equally important is having access to the liquidity and capital needed to serve a consolidating agriculture sector. Farms and ranches are getting larger due to decades of consolidation, and those operations face growing financial needs. The nation’s 945 ag-focused banks — all of them under $10 billion in assets and primarily serving rural markets — will need to leverage partners and programs to serve those clients.
“Ag banks want to finance everybody that they can in their community,” says Trever Hall, a vice president and relationship manager at Agri-Access, which provides ag lending capital solutions that help banks manage concentrations, support larger clients and provide faster credit decisions. “Sometimes, they just don’t have the horsepower behind them to do that.”
To learn more about supporting growth in agricultural lending, download the report, sponsored by Agri-Access, here.
