Farm Credit Bank of Texas history

On May 22, 1917, the first Federal Land Bank loan in the district was made to W.S. and Mary Smith of Grayson County, Texas, by the Van Alstyne National Farm Loan Association — which today is Lone Star Ag Credit.

Congress responded with the Agricultural Credit Act of 1923, which added 13 Federal Intermediate Credit Banks (FICBs), including the FICB of Houston, to the Farm Credit System.

The stock market crash of 1929 touched off the Great Depression, which threw thousands of farmers into bankruptcy.

A year earlier, the Farm Credit Act of 1933 had been passed to help struggling Depression-era farmers by organizing PCAs to deliver short- and intermediate-term farm and ranch loans.

But what McKissack also sees is a view of history in the making — her grandparents, ranchers Alfred and Callie Schwiening, took out the first PCA loan in Texas in 1934.

By 1968, all Farm Credit System lending entities had repaid their federal capital debt and were completely owned by their borrowers.

When the grandparents passed on in 1977, they left the property divided amongst their children, and Kathleen, McKissack’s mother, got the section known as 10-Mile Place.

In the midst of the farm debt crisis, Congress passed the Agricultural Act of 1987, providing up to $4 billion in federal loans to financially stressed Farm Credit institutions.

Farm Credit Bank of Texas is the product of the 1988 merger of the Federal Land Bank of Texas and Federal Intermediate Credit Bank of Texas.

In 1998, the bank’s stockholders approved the transfer of direct mortgage lending authority from the bank to its affiliated Federal Land Bank Associations (FLBAs). These FLBAs in turn converted to direct lenders, called Federal Land Credit Associations.

Farm Credit Bank of Texas completed its first private preferred stock offering in 2003.

In 2010, McKissack inherited her mother’s and grandmother’s home and 10-Mile Place, where she raises black Angus cattle, Rambouillet sheep and Spanish goats.

AgTexas has a robust patronage program, and has distributed $108 million to our customers since 2015.