Federal Credit Fridays: Zach Ducheneaux on the Farm Service Agency’s Loan Programs

Welcome to Federal Credit Fridays! The U.S. government is one of the largest lenders and credit guarantors on earth. Its portfolio is estimated at over $3.6 trillion, as measured by loan assets and the face value of loan guarantees. The government uses credit for a wide variety of policy missions, including housing, higher education, small businesses, rural and urban economic development, infrastructure, and export promotion, among others. This podcast will familiarize you with the vast world of federal credit, and we hope that you’ll learn about similarities and differences between these programs as well as the importance of their work to achieving policy missions within the framework of public-private collaboration.

In today’s podcast, Zach Ducheneaux, administrator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency, discusses his priorities for the agency’s loan programs, which address conservation, commodity production, disaster mitigation, and farm marketing. Ducheneaux previously served as executive director of the Intertribal Agriculture Council, where his history goes back to the 1990s, and his family still operates a fourth-generation ranch on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. Listen below and let us know what you think.