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USDA Rural Development strengthens communities
through programs and services that build a
foundation for prosperity and success across rural America.
Through a greater focus on food and food systems,
we provide opportunities for farmers and ranchers
to succeed and rural America to thrive,
while ensuring everyone can eat fresh,
healthy, and delicious food.
Working with a local community lender,
Prairieland Dairy received a Business and Industry
Guaranteed Loan from Rural Development,
to purchase a dairy processing facility that made it possible
for the dairy to process and distribute their milk
to the local Lincoln, Nebraska market.
I was born and raised in the dairy business
and I have four children and I raised them on the farm.
It's just a great way to raise a family.
It was our vision when we...
at the conception of Prairieland Dairy
to produce and process our own milk, and then also
take everything that we produce at the dairy
and market it at a retail level locally.
And we're able to help the local economy, in the fact
that we're creating jobs in the town that doesn't
have a whole lot of jobs right now and it was kind
of struggling, so we take a lot of pride in that as well.
Prairieland came to us with this project in mind
to purchase this facility and develop these markets to...
within the Lincoln area, to distribute milk.
We were very open to that idea and basically
we had sought out USDA to help facilitate this
through a B&I loan, which would offer to us,
as a community bank, the ability to loan money
to a specialized business like this,
in a small community, a rural community, where a bank
traditionally doesn't have a lot of industry loans.
In 2004, Hallam was completely destroyed
by a tornado and the rebuilding process
has taken quite some time.
The project here with Prairieland
has been part of the rebuilding of Hallam.
So basically to come in here with a rural development loan,
it really helped encourage job growth
and rebuilding of the town.
The process of acquiring the guarantee
was very painless. We needed a business plan
and a financial plan,
but any small business starting up needs that any way,
so it was a good exercise to go through.
We've had several meetings where they got together,
worked on their cash flow, basically presented it to
USDA and the Rural Development people were very helpful.
The dairy did do a Business and Industry
Guaranteed Loan program, and that Guaranteed Loan Program
allows us as USDA to guarantee the loan
with the lender for the borrower.
So it really is beneficial to these rural communities.
It allows the community bank to offer a loan
to our borrowers and it allows the borrowers
to take advantage of hopefully maybe a little
better rate in their terms and to get a guarantee
on that loan, so if something does happen,
the lender is protected.
Understanding the importance that they had
on really wanting to add value to their milk
products and do something where they could get
their product to the end consumer.
So to see this type of business grow and expand,
to see this happen in a rural community is very exciting.
I think local food is really important in rural development.
We're often known as a state,
an agriculture state that grows lots of things.
We grow corn, we grow soybeans, we grow a lot
of cattle and pork, but we don't really don't take
those products and add the value in it.
So when we can do those things locally,
then we reap the benefits of having our own employees
that we're hiring, of making sure that these
businesses stay in our local community.