Development of an agricultural digital lending platform for frontier and remote areas.

Agcredit Consulting LLC (agCredit) is developing a collaborative business model and customer- facing agricultural digital lending application for rural-based community banks to attract and retainagricultural producers.From 2012 to 2017 more than 40 percent of rural counties lost bank branches (Federal Reserve2019). In rural areas there are less than 2 banks per 100 sq miles with deeply affected areas having0.3 per 100 sq miles (Federal Reserve 2019). When banks close it greatly impacts access to credit(Nguyen 2019). Community banks fund approximately 80 percent of all agricultural productionloans providing a critical contribution to sustaining rural economies (ICBA 2017).Moreoverbanks provide jobs sponsor youth sports teams and support small town nonprofits. Many newnonbank ag lenders target the largest producers leaving small family-sized producers (88% of allfarms) and those in rural areas which tend to have a higher minority and low-income rate asunderserved with limited access to credit.Objectives include:1:agCredit in collaboration with four beta banks and USDA FSA Nebraska State Office willvalidate the EasyLoan Scorecard model.2: agCredit in collaboration with Don't Panic Labs will implement at least four features that willimprove process efficiency financial literacy and access to credit.3: The agCredit team will develop the product roadmap that includes added features and budget forcommercialization and will evaluate licensing needs.4:agCredit will identify three cloud-based core system providers to commercialize agCredit.bankthat provide producer and lender portal access loan portfolio accounting facilitation of paymentsdata storage etc.