agriculture is lower than nearly any other states, this is perhaps unexpected.
However, some banks are undoubtably planning to be more aggressive in this
area and nearly half of the respondents expect to provide more loans to farm-
ers than they do now, as shown in the following responses.

Question 2. Which category best represents farmer credit requirements in
 Florida?

 At the present time Five years from now
 No. of No. of
 Rank Banks % .Rank Banks %
need much more money 3 8 6 2 46 29
than they have 3 8 6 2 46 29
need more than
they have 1 88 57 1 89 57
they probably have
enough now 2 52 24 3 19 12
they probably have
more than enough now 4 5 3 4 3 2
No answer 126
 100 100

 These responses reflect an almost universal belief that Florida's farmers
will require more credit in the future. Nearly two-thirds of the banks feel
that the farmers need more funds than they have now and 87% are certain that
farmers requirements will be greater in the future. Banks additionally feel
the Production Credit Association is their one main competition.
 Only 6% of the banks employed loan officers who concentrate on farm
lending. In fact, agricultural specialists working for banks are very rare
in Florida. So short term farm loans are mostly shared among most or all
of the loan officers in tthe bank (80% fell into this category.) Yet 35
banks out of 175 thought that they would need to employ an agricultural loan
officer during the next five years. This figure, while a considerable change
from the present, is probably not sufficient to enable investor owned banks
to play a major role in agricultural lending in the state.


 17It is the author's opinion that there are more agricultural specialists
employed in banking in Champaign,Urbana, Illinois (perhaps 30) than in the
whole of Florida.