Delaware, Maryland entice and train young farmers with grants and no-interest loans

Cara and Philip Sylvester, on their farm
in Delaware (State photo)

Two states have recently introduced programs that make it easier for young people to start farming.

In Maryland's Montgomery County, this month County Executive Isiah Leggett announced an initiative that will train young farmers and place them on privately owned land to grow sustainable crops and livestock for five years or more. The Washington Post reports that county officials hope to approve five to 10 participants this winter and prepare them to farm in the spring. Funded by a federal Small Business Administration grant, the New Farmer Pilot Project aims to help build small farms at a time when the county is struggling to preserve farming. (Read more)

In Delware, 10 young farm families and individuals are on their way to owning their dreams with help from an economic development program designed to boost agribusiness in The First State. The farmers from Kent and Sussex counties all received help purchasing land – nearly 900 acres total – from the Delaware Young Farmers Program, marking its first year. The no-interest loan program was launched in July 2011 by Gov. Jack Markell as a way to reduce the capital investment for young people looking to set up agribusiness operations. It was funded through $3 million in the fiscal 2012 budget. (Read more)

Obama orders additional drought-relief measures

President Obama told the Agriculture Department today to authorize another $30 million to help crop and livestock producers damaged by the nation's worst drought in 50 years, and announced some other steps intended to mitigate the drought's impact, including a program to help commercial truck drivers make deliveries to drought-stricken areas.

Obama said the Small Business Administration "is working with other government agencies to connect even more eligible farmers, ranchers and businesses with low-interest emergency loans as well as counseling and workforce programs," and "The National Credit Union Administration is allowing an additional 1,000 credit unions to increase lending to small businesses."

The president said the White House is actively soliciting other ideas for drought relief. also called on Congress, which just started a five-week recess, to pass a Farm Bill with drought relief. "That's the single best way to help rural communities both in the short term and in the long term," he said. For the White House's drought "fact sheet," click here.

Rural areas have higher home ownership than national average, much of it free and clear of debt

Amid all the talk about home ownership being harder and harder to obtain -- and it is -- reporter Lance George has uncovered some revealing statistics about who has done the best job of settling in and paying on a mortgage, and of paying it off. George, writing in the Daily Yonder, cites census and federal housing data showing that in 2010, 65.1 percent of U.S. homes were occupied by their owners. In rural communities, the number was 71.6 percent.

Home ownership, the reporter notes, varies across demographic groups, and among regions within rural and small-town America. It is highest in the Midwest, at 74 percent, and lowest in the West, at 68 percent. "Delaware has the highest rural and small-town homeownership rate, at 77.8 percent, followed closely by Minnesota and Michigan, at 77 percent."

The biggest rural-urban disparity in the data was free and clear ownership. "Nearly 42 percent of homeowners in rural and small town America own their homes free and clear of mortgage debt, compared to roughly 27 percent of suburban and urban homeowners with no mortgage," George reports, offering possible reasons: a large number of manufactured homes with shorter loan terms and an older demographic; mortgage debt declines with age. (Read more)

Time to check your local hospital's credit rating

What is your local hospital's credit rating? Did you even know it had a credit rating? It might be a good time to check it, since many hospitals are getting lower ratings these days.

Nick Tabor, senior staff writer for the Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville, found that Jennie Stuart Medical Center's rating dropped, meaning that "The hospital may have to pay a higher interest rate if it needs to borrow money in the near future." Tabor wrote.

Fitch Ratings, one of the global agencies whose ratings guide investors, said uncertainty about the expansion of Kentucky's Medicaid system and how federal health reform will affect the hospital's finances were other reasons for the downgrade. The hospital has lost money in two of the last four years. Last year, it had a 1.9 percent loss.

Tabor explains there are eight ratings above the BBB level. If the facility's rating "were to slip two levels lower, to BB+, it would be on the level of 'junk bonds,' no longer considered investment grade," he reports.

There are three major rating companies in the U.S.: Fitch, Moody's and Standard and Poor's. Moody's expects downgrades of nonprofit hospitals to outnumber upgrades by the end of 2012, reports Jeffrey Young for The Huffington Post. Fitch expects the same will happen, said Senior Director Emily Wong. Smaller hospitals will especially feel the pinch since they "don't have as much ability to offset expense, inflation or reimbursement reductions," Wong said.

AA- and A-rated facilities are reviewed every two years. BBB and BBs are reviewed once a year, and B- and below-rated facilities are reviewed every six months. The easiest way to check ratings for hospitals is to get an account at each of the three major rating companies. "These accounts are free and easy to set up," Tabor tells us. (Read more)

For-profit colleges targeted for pitches to veterans; press call set for 3:30 Mon. on cost transparency

UPDATE: Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray will hold an embargoed press call with reporters at 3:30 p.m. ET today to make an announcement on college cost transparency. The call and all related materials will be embargoed for publication online until 12:01 a.m. Tuesday and in print Tuesday morning. To receive the dial-in information, send an email to press@ed.gov agreeing to the embargo terms.

For-profit colleges have been paid hundreds of millions of dollars in GI Bill benefits, and veterans' groups, the White House and some in Congress say it's beginning to look suspicious. "They say the schools prey on veterans with misleading ads while selling expensive and woefully inadequate educations," David Zucchino and Carla Rivera of the Los Angeles Times report. This is a rural story because military members come disproportionately from rural areas, and there are indications that abuse by for-profit colleges may also be disproportionately rural.

Eight of the 10 colleges that have collected the most GI Bill benefits since 2009 were for-profit institutions, and they got 86 percent of their revenue from the program, Zucchino and Rivera report. It generally costs twice as much to attend a for-profit school as a public one, and congressional investigators say dropout rates, interest rates and default rates at for-profit schools are higher than at public institutions. Also, credits veterans earn at for-profits don't always transfer.

In April, President Obama issued an executive order requiring the Department of Veterans Affairs to trademark "GI Bill" so it couldn't be used by for-profits to deceive veterans. The order also required the 6,000 colleges that receive GI Bill funds to offer "Know Before You Owe" information packets to veterans. (Read more)

Community banks likely to consolidate, shrink in number during the next few years

http://bizlex.com/2012/06/well-run-community-banks-will-endure-but-consolidations-are-likely