What Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation (Farmer Mac) told the SEC could break it.

Farmer Mac's entire credit book is agricultural and rural — its Agricultural Finance mortgage portfolio is ~50% crops, ~21% livestock and ~19% permanent plantings — so asset quality is driven by farm commodity prices and input costs. It flags a sector bifurcation: crop producers face headwinds from tepid commodity prices and elevated input costs compressing margins, while livestock producers benefit from strong demand and falling feed costs; substandard assets are concentrated in permanent-planting commodity types, with slight degradation in grain/oilseed performance. A sustained downturn in crop/grain commodity prices would raise provisions and credit losses. A core agricultural-commodity credit dependence.

“crop producers face headwinds from tepid commodity prices and elevated input costs that have compressed margins, while livestock producers are expected to benefit again in 2026 from robust consumer and export demand and falling feed costs.”

Farmer Mac conducts a significant portion of its business with a few business counterparties: in 2025, ten institutions generated approximately 55% of loan purchase volume in its Agricultural Finance line of business. As a secondary-market GSE that buys/guarantees Eligible Loans from originating lenders, loss of, or reduced volume from, a few large counterparties (or their decision to retain loans rather than sell) would increase variability and pressure new-business volume as assets pay down. The institutions are not individually named, so this is a counterparty-concentration risk rather than a named edge. A bounded but real counterparty concentration.

“In 2025, ten institutions generated approximately 55% of loan purchase volume in the Agricultural Finance line of business.”

Because its borrowers' repayment capacity depends on farm incomes, Farmer Mac is exposed to U.S. trade policy: it cites changes in U.S. trade policies (including tariffs and trade restrictions) and fluctuations in export demand for U.S. agricultural products as risks to agricultural-mortgage credit, collateral values and borrower repayment, and states that shifts in the trade outlook could have a meaningful impact on commodity prices and farm incomes. Retaliatory tariffs on U.S. crops (as in past trade wars) would compress farm margins and raise credit risk across its book. A specific agricultural trade-policy exposure transmitted through commodity prices.

“Shifts in the outlook for trade could have a meaningful impact on commodity prices and farm incomes.”