The Impact of the Secured Transactions Article on Commercial Practices with Respect to Agricultural Financing

"Agricultural financing" is a phrase of many hues; both words of the term defy precise definition. Whereas sales techniques for consumer durables are pretty much the same in Portland, Maine, or Portland, Oregon, different farm economies demand different financing methods. Thus, the stubborn facts of agriculture place an initial limitation on uniform codification. We know, however, that the draftsmen of the Secured Transactions Article were well aware of this.' Money lenders also vary their methods from area to area, often without rhyme or reason; differing practices prevail in almost identical basic economies.2 This makes it doubly difficult to fit agriculture financing into the proposed structure of the Code. Moreover, when we speak of varying credit practices, we have said almost all we can: we actually know very little about how the garden variety of farm financing goes on throughout the country. Like many routine operations, it has gone on for generations and the law has been assuming a set of practices which may or may not have been close to the facts. Unlike the restaters of the law of future interests, draftsmen for the Commercial Code have cleansed the Augean stables without benefit of inventory3 No one writes about farm financing in order to depict an institutional pattern.