Summary: The unpaid principal on the Farm Service Agency's active direct farm loan portfolio totaled about $9.7 billion at the end of fiscal year 1997. Delinquent borrowers held about $2.7 billion--or 28.2 percent--of this amount. The size of the agency's portfolio, as well as the percentage held by delinquent borrowers, has decreased since 1995, when the portfolio totaled $11.4 billion, of which 40.7 percent was held by delinquent borrowers. In fiscal years 1996 and 1997, the agency wrote off about $1.9 billion in principal and interest owed on farm loans. For fiscal years 1989 through 1997, the agency wrote off $15.2 billion in direct farm loans for nearly 80,000 borrowers. About $1.7 billion of the agency's losses resulted from reducing the debts of borrowers whose loans were restructured, and about $2.4 billion resulted from forgiving the debts of those who made buyout payments. Most of the write-off--about $11.1 billion--occurred through debt resettlement. Since the enactment of the 1996 farm bill through June 1998, the Farm Service Agency made or guaranteed $54.2 billion in new farm operating loans to 690 borrowers whose debts had been reduced when their earlier farm loans were restructured. Most of the 690 borrowers who received loans obtained direct farm operating loans, and about 23 percent obtained guaranteed farm operating loans.
