Iowa company helps train USDA farm agency
By ANNE FITZGERALD | Register Agribusiness Writer
04/11/2004

During the farm crisis of the 1980s, Gary Kruse worked as an independent consultant to help mediate disputes between farmers and agricultural lenders.

In those days, farmers and their lenders usually penciled out farm finances. Seeing a need for improvement, Kruse developed a computer spreadsheet to help producers to do the tally more precisely than they had been able to do the old-fashioned way.

His creation caught on, and today, Kruse's company, Equity Consultants Inc., is a market leader in software for farm financial analysis. More than 1,500 lending institutions in the United States and Canada use the software produced by his company, which is based in Glenwood.

Last week, Kruse embarked on one of his most ambitious projects ever: training employees of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency to use lending software designed by Equity Consultants. The training, being conducted in Omaha, will run until the end of September. Next year, farmers will be trained on the system.

Agricultural lending is typically more complicated than personal loans for several reasons, including various revenue sources, volatile commodity prices and the seasonality of the business, said Dave McEvoy, an Equity Consultants vice president.

"Agriculture really can be a difficult analysis," he said. "Agriculture's very much a unique beast. . . . It goes way beyond just a small business."

With a $16 billion loan portfolio and more than 100,000 farmer-borrowers, the Farm Service Agency administers both direct farm loans and loan guarantees. About 2,000 employees of the agency, including top administrators, began training last week.

Equity Consultants won the USDA contract last September. The deal will generate about 20 percent of the company's annual sales, McEvoy said.

Plans call for the company, which employs 26 people, to develop similar software for the small business and personal finance markets, he said.

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