Farmer Mac Touts $6B Portfolio

The Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corp., Washington, D.C., has announced the issuance of a long-term standby purchase commitment that boosted its portfolio of loans, guarantees, and commitments to a record level of $6 billion.The standby purchase commitment was made to a Farm Credit System institution on a $479 million pool of agricultural real estate mortgage loans, Farmer Mac said. "The transaction is a product of Farmer Mac's ongoing efforts to diversify its marketing focus to include large program transactions that emphasize high asset quality, with greater protection against adverse credit performance and commensurately lower compensation for the assumption of credit risk and administrative costs," said Henry D. Edelman, chief executive officer of the government-sponsored enterprise. Farmer Mac can be found online at http://www.farmermac.com.