The story
The Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation was created by the Agricultural Credit Act of 1987 (Pub. L. 100–233) as a federally chartered, private corporation responsible for guaranteeing the timely repayment of principal and interest to investors in a new agricultural secondary market. The secondary market allows a lending institution to sell a qualified farm real estate loan to an agricultural mortgage marketing facility, or pooler, which packages these loans, and sells to investors securities that are backed by, or represent interests in, the pooled loans. Farmer Mac guarantees the timely repayment of principal and interest on these securities and, under authorities granted in 1995, can also serve as a loan pooler.
The company was founded during a $4 billion bailout of the Farm Credit System, hoping to provide an alternative source of credit to farmers following the models of Fannie Mae and Ginnie Mae.
2008 financial crisis
Farmer Mac had $47.2 million invested in Fannie Mae shares in June of the 2008 financial crisis. Over the next few months, during the Federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the investments lost about $44 million in value. The company also had significant investments in Lehman Brothers. In response, the Farm Credit System bailed the company out by purchasing $60 million in Farmer Mac stock, and Zions Bancorporation of Salt Lake City purchased another $5 million in stock.
From Wikipedia’s article on Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7