ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in this book. The book identifies and explains the major challenges and opportunities confronting those firms that lend to agricultural producers and agribusinesses as they prepare for the twenty-first century. Farms are changing, growing larger across the range of commercial-scale farms, developing more complex business relationships among suppliers, marketers, and processors, and becoming technologically more advanced. Lenders and other providers of financial services to the food and fiber sector are undergoing change as well. The distinction between lenders and other financial services providers will blur as statutory and regulatory barriers come down and nationwide branch banking becomes a reality. The lending and financial services field will become much more crowded as most larger supply, marketing, and processing firms doing business with farmers seek to develop credit or other financial services products to market.
