Industries We Serve

CoBank’s customers provide the critical lifeline services we all depend on—food, water, energy and communications. Either located in rural communities or supported by rural agriculture, our customers are playing a vital role in rural America.

Agribusiness

CoBank’s agribusiness operating segment includes lending to regional and corporate agribusiness customers, export finance customers and leasing customers. It serves cooperatives and other customers involved in a wide variety of industries, including grain handling and marketing, farm supply, food processing, dairy, livestock, fruits, nuts, vegetables, cotton, biofuels and forest products.

The agribusinesses served by CoBank range from small, local farmers' cooperatives to large regional agricultural cooperatives and multinational food companies. Some of the bank's largest customers are cooperatives that are also well-known name brands, such as Land O'Lakes, Blue Diamond Almonds and Sunkist.

CoBank offers a variety of loans and leases to our agribusiness customers including:

• Short-term or seasonal loans and lines of credit to purchase grain or other seasonal assets.
• Intermediate- to long-term loans to build new facilities or finance major purchases.

Communications

Years ago, rural communications meant delivering “plain old telephone service” to farms and towns across the country. Today, it means much more. CoBank finances the construction, operation and maintenance of vital communications systems throughout rural America including the expansion of fiber optic networks and broadband internet along with upgrades in wireless technology.

Almost 40 percent of Americans in rural communities lack access to broadband Internet service, compared to only 4 percent of those in urban areas. CoBank’s customers are helping to close this “digital divide” to connect rural America to the world, helping rural businesses compete in the global market, and rural citizens access services like long distance learning and tele-medicine.

Power

CoBank is a major provider of credit and financial services to the nation’s rural energy sector. Our customer-owners include hundreds of rural electric generation, transmission and distribution cooperatives that deliver power to millions of people in rural communities around the country. We also supply financing to independent power producers that are developing and building power facilities.

Like CoBank, our rural electric distribution cooperative customers are owned by their members and dedicated to a long-term mission: providing affordable, reliable power to people. At the same time, many of these customers are investing in next-generation renewable energy projects, and helping to create a cleaner, more sustainable world.

Water

Citizens in many rural communities depend on CoBank's water customers every time they turn on the tap. Many of our customers are in the business of providing clean, safe drinking water to rural areas, while others process wastewater and deliver other services. CoBank works with investor-owned utility companies, municipalities, and water and wastewater not-for-profit associations to provide the funding required to meet our customers’ needs.

A large part of this country's water delivery system dates back to the years shortly after World War II when the federal government was building out the nation's infrastructure. However, during the past few decades, federal money for these systems has been reduced and each year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, the estimated price tag for patching up the infrastructure rises. It has been estimated that more than $335 billion would need to be spent over the next 20 years to upgrade the U.S. water infrastructure.