marketing per dollar of short term debt, and at best, the potential for
future investment through short term lending. Yet even though this ratio
has narrowed since 1969 for all states, Florida's ratio is always higher
than the others, suggesting that non-real estate indebtness in the state
could be profitably increased. As this form of debt comes mainly from
Production Credit Associations or commercial banks, and because banks were
apparently playing an atypically small part in lending to agriculture a
survey of Florida commercial banks was conducted during the summer of 1978.


 SECTION 3

 The Florida Commercial Bank Survey

 The survey had two main purposes. The first was to obtain some basic
 data on bank short term lending practices to agriculture. The second was
 to see whether bankers were becoming more interested in short term agri-
 cultural lending than they had been in the past. There were reasons to
 suggest that they were becoming more interested. These reasons included
 the legal change which allowed branch banking in Florida after January 1,
 1977; the very high loan loss ratios largely resulting from construction
 loans during the 1974-75 recession and the author's contacts with bankers.
 Some 640 postal questionnaires were sent to commercial banks in Florida,
using a mailing list supplied by the Florida Banker's Association, producing
270 responses. The responses rate was better than these figures suggest be-
cause at least 37 banks were new branches and forwarded the questionnaire
to their parent bank, which replied on their behalf.
 The survey itself dealt with short term lending, and was divided into
three main parts. Part I used seven questions to discover how each bank
rated and serviced its local agriculture. Part II asked six questions in
attempting to clarify how individual bankers assessed their farmer clients.
Part III employed eight questions in discerning the future role of banks
in agriculture. The methodology was simple.
 No statisical sampling techniques were performed. This was because
the original questionnaire was sent to all the banks on the mailing list
of the Florida Banker's Association rather than drawing a sample from
this list. Furthermore it was felt that the geographic distribution of