This site is dedicated to the history of the Farm Credit System, and it is the largest online collection of primary-source material relating to rural credits. Documents in our archive have been collected from the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, university libraries, private collections, and the presidential libraries. All of this material is available online, digitally reproduced, for the use of interested researchers and history buffs.

Created by Congress through the 1916 Federal Farm Loan Act, the Farm Credit System was the nation's first Government Sponsored Enterprise (GSE), and it laid a framework for rural people to access farm loans during periods of otherwise constricted private credit. The System has expanded over the years, to include programs for funding rural development, forestry, fisheries, and farmer cooperatives, as well as agriculture. The System repaid the last of its federal funds in 2006, and today it is wholly farmer-owned, by more than half a million borrowers.

This site includes material from across the nation, and throughout the history of the Farm Credit System. Accessible are a range of documents,fully digitized, including government reports, newspaper and magazine articles, political cartoons, photographs, speeches, press releases, internal memoranda and correspondence, letters, briefing reports, and audio and video recordings.

This project is sponsored by the Farm Credit Council and the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, and has been funded through the generosity of the Farm Credit Council Board of Directors.