Through our educational workshops, the principal objective of this project was to deliver useful and reliable information on statutory agricultural liens to producers, from a producer's perspective. We also sought to encourage producers themselves in the use of statutory ag liens, as lienholding parties, for risk management purposes. Indeed, the liveliest questions and discussion arose in the context of participants’ use of agister's liens. Through this proposal we worked with 219 producers through workshops (127 attendees), and one-on-one sessions (92 producers). The producers gained knowledge on agricultural liens, leases, and loans.
We had great success and major impacts through our one-on-one work. Not exclusively, but predominantly, this work has arisen in the contact of what are generally called financial distress transactions. Such contexts run the range from anticipating problems and addressing them before they flare up to reacting to foreclosures. Much of this work has involved detailed analysis of the loan and security positions and interests of various creditors and lenders, with an eye to sorting out a sometimes muddled picture so that options for meeting demands may be discerned and explored. This often requires an understanding of security interests, lien positions, and competing demands. We believe our one-on-one work with these families have been useful. We hear expressions of that from these families.