Federal Reserve Statistical Release E.15 - Agricultural Finance Databook

Section B:  Selected Statistics from the Quarterly Reports of Condition of Commercial Banks

The data in tables B.1 through B.8 are prepared using data from the quarterly reports of condition and income for
commercial banks.  These reports changed substantially beginning in March 2001, and the information on the
delinquencies and charge-offs of non-real-estate farm loans after that date is not directly comparable to that shown in
earlier editions of the databook.  Under the new system, banks with more than $300 million in assets or banks with
foreign offices report the same information as before.  However, smaller banks at which farm production loans account
for more than 5 percent of total loans now report the same information on delinquencies and charge-offs of farm
production loans that larger bank do.  In the new reporting system, small banks at which farm production loans account
for less than 5 percent of total loans are excused from reporting delinquencies or charge-offs of farm production loans.
Before March 2001, these small banks had reported delinquencies and charge-offs of "agricultural loans" according to
each bank's own definition, and we used these responses to help estimate total delinquencies of farm production loans.
Under the new reporting system, the totals for the nation as a whole include estimates of delinquencies and charge-offs
of non-real-estate farm loans for small banks that hold about 35 percent of the volume of such loans that is outstanding.
All banks continue to report delinquencies and charge-offs of loans that are secured by farm real estate, which are
shown in tables B.4 and B.5.

Examination of total lending at banks that have a high exposure to agricultural loans provides an alternative perspective
on the agricultural lending situation.  Agricultural banks in table B.4 through table B.9 are those that have a proportion
of farm loans (real-estate plus non-real-estate) to total loans that is greater than the unweighted average at all banks.
The current estimate of this average can be found in the far right column of table B.8.

Information about failed banks (table B.9) is obtained from news releases of the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation, with agricultural banks in our tabulation defined as in the previous paragraph.

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