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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

More Financial Help for Those Who Want to Get Back to the Land

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Monday, October 13, 2014   

YANKTON, S.D. - The U.S. Department of Agriculture is improving farm loans by expanding eligibility and lending limits to more beginning farmers.

Traci Bruckner, senior associate for agriculture and conservation policy at the Center for Rural Affairs, says the changes are part of the micro-loan program that has been a successful one for beginning farmers.

"It gives them that ability to get some access to some credit, and start to build some history and start to develop their farming business, and then they can grow from there," Bruckner says. "It's really helping give a leg up, so they can get started and then get stronger as they enter into agriculture."

Bruckner explains the eligibility and lending changes will help more people who want to get into farming and ranching, as well as those who want to improve their current operations.

Another important change, according to Bruckner, is the program's flexibility. It no longer requires a farmer to show they have filed income taxes for three years to be able to buy land and become eligible for loans. She explains not all new farmers are new to agriculture.

"We have worked with a lot of beginning farmers that have apprenticed on farms, they've interned on farms or worked for farmers, so we were asking them in the Farm Bill to kind of loosen up that requirement and let other types of experience show towards that management and financial experience they need, to show they can pay back a farm ownership loan," she says.

Bruckner adds more than half of the U.S. Department of Agriculture loans now go to beginning farmers.


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