Nebraska Banker "Pleasantly Surprised" By Loan Renewals

Mar 21, 2017

A central Nebraska ag banker says loan renewal season has gone much better than he expected.

During a panel discussion at the Nebraska Governor's Ag Conference in Kearney, Stuart Fox, president of Nebraska State Bank of Broken Bow, was asked about non-performing loans and possible non-renewals.

"That's a lot easier question to answer than I thought it was going to be a year ago," Fox said. "Going into the renewal season for this year, we thought it was going to be the most difficult renewal season we've had in a long period of time. But we've been pleasantly surprised by the renewals we've done. We're not seeing tons of people making profits in the ag sector, but they're a lot closer to breakeven than we expected."

Fox said that's mainly due to excellent crop production.

"The row crop producers, most of them broke even or were very close to breakeven-and some of them showed some profits if they had a good marketing plan," he said. "The ones that struggled the most-you know, cow-calf guys were okay, but the ones buying calves, feeding them, feeder cattle-those guys really went backwards. So those are the ones where we have the biggest concern."

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.