The Project to #SaveOurFarms: Hold Farm Credit Accountable for Fraud & Corruption

This campaign is designed to sponsor the legal fight to help save America’s family farms by holding the Farm Credit System and government accountable for enabling lenders to actively work against America’s farmer and rancher borrowers for at least the last decade.

The U.S. Farm Credit System is a government sponsored enterprise owned by the Farm Credit borrowers. And the Farm Credit Administration is the “independent” agency within the executive branch that is supposed to be the regulator of the Farm Credit System. It is not funded through appropriations but rather is funded through annual assessments paid by the Farm Credit institutions it regulates, with those costs passed on to the borrowers. 

The American farmer- and rancher- borrowers OWN IT ALL. The entire System. 

But evidence to date has shown that the Farm Credit lenders and the Farm Credit Administration are actively working against the interests of the American family farm. They have taken away the borrowers’ ability to sue Farm Credit lenders in court, even if the lender blatantly violates federal law (the Farm Credit Act) or regulations. They have exempted themselves from virtually every other federal lending law designed to protect borrowers and then made the Farm Credit Administration the sole authority for providing relief to aggrieved borrowers.

But for the last 35+ years, the Farm Credit Administration - who is paid for by the borrowers it’s supposed to be protecting - cannot produce a single instance where it has provided relief to or protected any aggrieved borrower who has reached out for the Administration’s help. Farm Credit lenders are illegally foreclosing on American family farms with no repercussions for doing so. Its regulator - the Farm Credit Administration - is enabling them to do this.

Complaints of impropriety across the Farm Credit System are not just being ignored — those who make complaints, and who are a threat to exposing the truth, like in lending relationships with foreign entities and Big Ag corporations — those whistleblowers are dealt with by the lawyers; so that the takeover of American farmland rolls on. The evidence to date has shown that Big Ag, along with top-level banking, accounting, and law firms have effectively hijacked the Farm Credit System to serve their own interests - which are directly opposed to the interests of the American family farm. 

A Federal Agency has once again been weaponized against private citizens — and this time it’s to take their land and, for many of them, their way of life. We’ve lost millions of acres of American farmland. It’s land we will never get back. And all because those on the inside desire to protect themselves over the ones they are paid to protect: The American Farmer.

The Farm Credit System has spent millions in lobbying via its PAC. And they lobby on “important matters” for the American farmer like ensuring that no one but the Farm Credit Administration can decide that farmer borrower’s fate if they are subject to abuse by the lender, which includes wrongful foreclosures — 

And to lobby and ensure the Senate Agriculture Committee will not even give President Trump’s nominee a confirmation hearing for … two years — 

And finally to lobby so Farm Credit can continue to lend to these foreign entities who might be willing to pay some really big coin so the executives will all make money and so the agenda can be furthered with a little foreign investment in American farmland at “strategic” locations. 

The Government Accountability Office recently said: “Agricultural land is a valuable asset here, and an attractive one for foreign investors. In fact, foreign investment in agriculture has grown substantially—to as much as 43.4 million acres in 2022. But these investments may have consequences for U.S. national security.” 

This is not just a matter involving cows, plows, and sows. It’s a matter of national security. 

We are two farmers, who happen to also be lawyers, going against the federal government and an arsenal of the nation’s largest law firms. Our background is in agricultural, environmental, employment, and consumer protection law. And we need your help moving forward in exposing the corruption and the abuses being committed against the farmer and rancher borrowers. 

We have already filed a petition for writ of mandamus against President Biden in federal court in the Middle District of Tennessee. (Kittle v. Biden, Case No. 1:24-cv-00025). We intend to file additional suits against the Farm Credit Administration and others. Going to trial could top $200,000 or more for a case against federal government agencies. But, we can win this. Together we can finance a lawsuit for the farmer and rancher borrowers to take back the Farm Credit System, and hopefully, in turn, American farmland. 

Any excess funds will help establish a non-profit legal fund to provide future legal services benefitting the interests of American family farms. 

If you’d like to learn more about the evidence, us, or our legal fight so far, please feel free to visit: https://linktr.ee/dustinkittle