FEDERAL AGRICULTURAL MORTGAGE CORP

Business Outlook

Products and Portfolio

We play a vital role in serving rural America by offering liquidity, capital, and risk management tools as a secondary market to help increase the accessibility of financing to provide vital liquidity for American agriculture and rural infrastructure. Our growth trajectory is closely tied to the capital and liquidity needs of the lending institutions that serve agriculture and infrastructure businesses and the overall financial health of borrowers in these sectors.

Several factors continue to influence our business volume growth dynamics. Because the Farm & Ranch portfolio contains a significant share of legacy low‑rate loans, refinance incentives remain muted, keeping prepayment rates below historical norms. Also, a tightening agricultural economy is creating the need for more liquidity and working capital for borrowers managing through this agricultural cycle. The net effect of these forces contributed to strong Farm & Ranch loan purchase portfolio growth during first quarter 2026 and we anticipate this growth to persist throughout the rest of 2026. We experienced an increase in wholesale finance volume during first quarter 2026, driven by financings drawn from numerous AgVantage facilities, including a large issuance from a facility put in place in late 2025. Future wholesale finance growth will likely be influenced by market interest rates and credit spreads, overall economic conditions and loan growth opportunities, and the relative value of our product versus the broader market. Continued strong interest in data centers, broadband expansion, and constructing and completing renewable energy projects before the sunset of tax credits, along with the overall need for energy generation and transmission capacity for rural America, provided significant opportunities for Infrastructure Finance during first quarter 2026. We expect these opportunities to persist for the remainder of the year.

Opportunities for profitable future business volume growth include our potential role in alleviating liquidity, capital, and return-on-equity challenges faced by agricultural and infrastructure lenders. Our suite of products includes loan and loan portfolio purchases, participations, guarantees, LTSPCs, wholesale funding, and risk-transfer financial securities. Ongoing business and product development efforts continue to attract private lenders, institutional investors, and non-traditional originators, resulting in the diversification of our customer base and product set, which could potentially generate increased product demand from new sources. Our expanded loan servicing capabilities enhance our loan portfolio purchase value proposition, adding new product offerings to an increasingly diverse customer base.

Growing relationships with larger agriculture lenders, industry consolidation, interest rate volatility, general market uncertainty, and financial institutions' increasing focus on capital efficiency and liquidity, are expected to continue to provide increased opportunities for our loan purchase, risk management, and wholesale funding solutions. The financing needs arising from mergers, acquisitions, consolidation, and vertical integration in the agricultural and infrastructure industries present further opportunities for our loan purchase products and other financing solutions. Investments supporting consumer and food, fuel and fiber supply demand may increase financing needs in the food and agriculture supply chain, potentially requiring incremental capital support through the secondary market. Deepening relationships with eligible infrastructure counterparties are expected to continue to create opportunities to support fiber and broadband-related transactions, including significant market activity and investments in wholesale data centers and renewable energy projects.

Operations

We anticipate ongoing increases in operating expenses over the next several years, aligned with our planned expansion of investments in technology, business infrastructure, and human capital. These investments are designed to enhance capacity and efficiency in support of market growth opportunities and long-term strategic objectives. By investing in infrastructure and business platforms, we aim to scale more efficiently in tandem with future portfolio and earnings growth. These initiatives are expected to improve product delivery, business operations, and scalability to better position us to capitalize on future market growth opportunities.

Another focus of our planned infrastructure investments is a continued effort to expand our servicing capabilities and to enhance the efficiency of processes associated with loan onboarding and servicing. We expect to continue to leverage technology enhancements and servicing standardization efforts to drive scalability and consistency. We plan to implement technology enhancements and process re-engineering over the next several years to continue to incorporate servicing platform optimization and to provide flexibility in accessing loan portfolio information, increase standardization of data and processing, and streamline operational workflows.

Agricultural Finance Industry Outlook

Farm Incomes

The farm profitability outlook remains varied for 2026. Total net cash farm income rebounded slightly in 2025, rising 8% relative to 2024 according to the USDA. In 2026, the USDA’s initial forecast shows farm incomes rising another 3% relative to 2025. However, that expected overall improvement obscures a bifurcation across agricultural sectors. Namely, crop producers face headwinds from tepid commodity prices and elevated input costs that have compressed margins, while livestock producers are expected to benefit again in 2026 from robust consumer and export demand and falling feed costs. Shifts in the outlook for trade could have a meaningful impact on commodity prices and farm incomes. The current USDA forecast shows U.S. agricultural exports increasing modestly in 2026.

One notable development during first quarter 2026 was a global spike in energy prices due to recent events in the Middle East. The spike in energy markets drove fuel and fertilizer prices higher ahead of the 2026 U.S. growing season. Some producers may have been financially insulated for this growing season, as it is common to contract for inputs before planting. However, industry estimates vary regarding the proportion of growers who had purchased fuel and fertilizer ahead of the recent events in the Middle East, and the proportion of inputs procured in advance likely varies by geography and production type. At the same time, higher energy prices have historically been supportive of commodity prices. The impact on prices has varied significantly across crop types, though, and may continue to do so. All told, higher fuel and fertilizer prices might pressure margins this year if producers do not see a corresponding increase in the prices for commodities they grow. Ultimately, the total financial impact on growers will likely be determined by the duration of the energy market disruption.

A divergence in commodity prices between row crops and proteins combined with elevated input costs could lead to competing and compounding impacts on loan performance and agricultural credit demand. Constraints on cash flow and additional market volatility could cause loan delinquencies to rise above historical averages, most likely in commodities experiencing negative market conditions, such as some grains and permanent crops. Cash flow constraints and heightened uncertainty can also increase demand for debt capital to reorganize balance sheets and replace lost incomes. We believe that our portfolio and market strategy is sufficiently diversified by borrower, industry, and region to maintain robust portfolio performance through the current cycle to be positioned to support any expansion of the farm mortgage market that may arise in the coming quarters.

Land Values

Farmland value growth rates continued to moderate in 2025 following successive years of strong appreciation. Land value survey data from the USDA shows a 4.3% increase in average farm real estate values from June 2024 to June 2025. Annual farm real estate value gains were highest in the Southern Plains (5.9%) and the Lake states (5.7%) and still strong but slowing in the Northern Plains (4.9%), the Southeast (4.7%), and the Corn Belt (4.0%).

Farmland transaction data, like the USDA survey results, show weaker farmland sales prices in 2025. The Farmer Mac Farmland Price Index Powered by AcreValue® decreased 2% in fourth quarter 2025 relative to the same period in 2024. Basing this index on actual farmland transactions can lead to greater volatility, as many economic factors affecting land markets are highly localized and some markets may experience greater volatility in farmland values than state or national averages indicate. Based on our robust collateral underwriting standards, we believe that our loan collateral is well-positioned to endure reasonably foreseeable volatility in farmland values that could result from external factors.

Markets and Weather

Exogenous factors facing farm and food producers can create uncertainty and market instability within the sector. Some of the external market conditions that have affected, and could continue to adversely affect, the farm and food sectors in 2026 include foreign trade and trade policy, supply chain disruptions, and weather and environmental conditions. Water availability is a perennial concern for many agricultural producers. Drought conditions increased modestly in intensity and prevalence in first quarter 2026, largely across several southern, southwestern, and southeastern states.

The ongoing implementation of groundwater management regulation, especially in California, continues to influence land values in many regions of the state. We work closely with water consultants and collateral valuation professionals to identify properties influenced by changing water availability. For loans in areas that commonly experience exceptional drought (primarily in California), our underwriting standards include an assessment of anticipated long-term water availability for the related property and how water availability impacts the collateral value and the borrower's liquidity position to mitigate that risk.

Agricultural Processing and Food Supply Chain

The production of food, feed, fiber, and biofuels has generally been economically viable during the past few years, but economic factors continue to evolve into 2026. Biofuels have gained demand due to low-carbon regulations in several states and incremental tax benefits for the production of renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel. The spike in energy prices in first quarter 2026 is also potentially supportive of biofuel margins. A large number of planned biofuel projects and new facilities for 2026 and 2027 could provide support for raw materials such as corn and soybeans, but markets for these fuels are nascent and could evolve or erode rapidly in the coming quarters. Trade policy uncertainty, labor availability, changes to consumer demand due to health policy and pharmaceuticals, and a high risk of global economic stress could pose challenges for these sectors into 2026. Still, consumer spending held steady throughout 2024 and 2025, providing stable conditions for value-added food, feed, fiber, and biofuel consumption. Consumer demand, particularly for animal protein products, is expected to provide a good tailwind for many food processors and agribusinesses in 2026. Credit demand in these sectors could grow in the next few quarters if interest rate policy maintains course or loosens, inflation rises again, mergers and acquisitions activity increases, or economic and trade policy uncertainty clears up.

Infrastructure Finance Industry Outlook

Power & Utilities

Economic conditions affecting rural power and electricity markets typically follow those in the general economy. According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, sales and the revenue from the sale of electricity to customers advanced in 2025, with an annual increase in sales of 1.5% and an increase in revenue of 7.3%, respectively, in the last 12 months through January 2026 compared to January 2025. This increase was the result of higher residential and commercial electricity sales combined with a sizable increase in average prices paid for electricity relative to the previous year. Electricity demand was consistently strong in 2025, and power producers are continuing to invest in more capacity to meet the rising demand from consumers and data centers. Continued geopolitical uncertainty in the Middle East and Eastern Europe have led to higher energy price volatility, but power producers are generally able to pass higher input costs through to retail electricity prices, as evidenced by higher retail electricity prices in 2022, 2023, and 2025. Credit demand for electric cooperatives will likely be tied to ongoing normal-course capital expenditures related to maintaining and upgrading utility infrastructure. These growth opportunities may be affected by the demand for electric power in rural areas, increased power demand from regional data centers, capital expenditures by electric cooperatives driven by regulatory or technological changes, the changing interest rate environment, increased policy initiatives to support rural connectivity, and competitive dynamics within the rural utilities cooperative finance industry. Generally, these investments are expected to continue at or above historical levels based on the replacement and modernization of existing and new infrastructure, as well as increasing demand for electricity across the spectrum of residential, commercial, and industrial customers.

Renewable Energy

Investment in renewable energy generation and deployment of energy storage technologies in the last five years deepened our relationships with existing customers through new business opportunities. According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, renewable energy net generation grew by 38% in the last five years, compared to a non-renewable electricity net generation increase of 4%. The volatile cost of fossil fuel-based inputs, combined with policy initiatives and the falling costs of renewable power generation, influenced this change in generation capacity. In response to this expansion, we have hired industry-specialized staff and deployed new financing products tailored to the renewable energy sector, which represents a rapidly developing market opportunity for Farmer Mac.

Changes to tax policy may alter the trajectory and velocity of investments in U.S. renewable energy. H.R. 1, commonly referred to as the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" signed into law on July 4, 2025, phases out tax credits that have been routinely used to support renewable power project investments. As these tax credits phase out, new power projects are still likely to be financed, but the marginal costs of electricity generation may be higher without subsidies. Increased political and policy uncertainty and higher cost structures could decrease the overall renewable power investment market growth velocity over the next five years. Wood Mackenzie estimates U.S. solar installations dropped 14% in 2025 relative to the total gigawatts installed in 2024. However, due to the substantial increase in demand for electricity and need for new power generation, we expect to continue to participate in renewable energy power project finance transactions for both new projects and refinancing opportunities of existing projects.

As of March 31, 2026, we have calculated approximately $30 million of remaining capacity to use renewable energy tax credits to carry back to the prior three years' federal corporate income tax liability. We are focused on purchasing renewable energy tax credits for projects in rural areas or associated with agriculture, such as renewable gas generation from dairy waste. Under H.R. 1's phase-outs of future renewable energy investment tax credits, projects eligible for renewable energy investment tax credits generally must be placed in service by December 31, 2027 unless construction begins by July 4, 2026.

Broadband Infrastructure

Rural telecommunication and data connectivity has proven to be of vital economic importance in the last decade, as more households and agricultural enterprises require more data and connectivity to thrive. The expected continued rapid growth in digital technologies, including the ongoing interest and investment in artificial intelligence, advancements in cloud computing, and wireless network densification, will require significantly more computing and storage capabilities and investment in more fiber network capacity. In addition to capital projects spurred by government-backed support programs, we could see an increase in financing opportunities for other telecommunications providers in rural areas. For example, fiber line expansion, wireless broadband deployment, industry consolidation and efficiency through mergers and acquisitions, and data processing center buildouts are all increasingly important to rural economic opportunity, and the food and agriculture industries require constant connectivity. However, some types of "leapfrog" technology advances in the broadband infrastructure sector, such as low orbit satellite communication systems, could put pressure on the profitability of the providers of older digital technologies.

Changes in tax policy, trade, and immigration laws, as well as energy cost and availability, could result in significant challenges and opportunities to infrastructure borrowers. These changes could lead to delays in completing current projects and slow future investments in renewable energy and battery storage projects as well as the deployment of fiber and broadband infrastructure in rural areas. Any lack of availability or increased costs of components or technology that results from tariffs or trade restrictions also could lead to delays in completion or slow future investments in infrastructure projects. The infrastructure sector may experience varying degrees of disruption and adaptation in response to these evolving policies, and these changes could increase the volatility of sector profitability in the near-term. The potential for disruption in these sectors due to policy changes may be somewhat mitigated by the historically strong market demand for connectivity, the ongoing diversification of infrastructure providers, and continued strong investments in data centers and fiber infrastructure. New data center infrastructure requires significant demand for power, so delays in grid hookups or electricity capacity could delay some capital or infrastructure deployment.