Friday, January 4, 2019
CapitalPress.com
13
Harvest Capital title sponsor of NW Ag Show
In the late 1980s, while
a regional investment ana-
lyst for a large national
firm, Brian Field decided he
wanted to provide his cus-
tomers with more personal-
ized service.
“The service I wanted
to provide agriculture was
at the kitchen table, not by
designing a portfolio that is
going to be built for a partic-
ular institution,” Field said.
By 1992, Field was able
to do just that. He started
Harvest Capital Co. that
year and hasn’t looked back.
Harvest Capital is this year’s
title sponsor of the North-
west Ag Show.
As Field puts it, he now
is able to “ride for the brand
for that individual farm or
ranch and for that particular
time.”
Brian Field of Harvest Capital
“We in this field get a
chance to do long-term real
estate mortgage invest-
ing every day,” Field said.
“But a lot of these farms and
ranches do this maybe once
or twice in a career, and it is
important to custom design
something that more partic-
ularly finances their needs,
rather than just putting a fee
on something, getting the
documents together, closing
it and going on to the next
one.
“It is a different concept
of financing, and it is born
and bred from production
agriculture roots through-
out our whole staff,” he
said.
Today, Field works with a
team of six full-time invest-
ment analysts, all with roots
in farming, timber, ranching
or agribusiness.
Field grew up on a ranch
in Colorado and has been
in agribusiness since grad-
uating from Colorado State
University with an agribusi-
ness degree. He is a past
FFA state president for Col-
orado, and currently is chair-
man-elect of the Individual
Giving Council Division of
the National FFA Founda-
tion, poised to take the chair
at the FFA’s 2019 national
convention in Indianapolis.
Harvest Capital is one
of the largest backers of
the Oregon FFA Founda-
tion, he said, and its staff
works closely with FFA stu-
dents in helping them pre-
pare for state and county
competitions.
“We are intimately and
intricately involved with the
training of our FFA people,”
he said.
Harvest Capital offers
several
loan
products,
including long-term, fixed-
rate loans, which is the com-
pany’s most popular loan.
“That is not because we
are pushing that,” he said.
“That is because our cus-
tomers, who are some of
the smartest business peo-
ple on the face of the planet,
are choosing them. They are
analyzing the yield curve
and recognizing the need to
stabilize rates in their own
balance sheets.
“We see a lot of peo-
ple wanting to take one
unknown out of the huge
risks they take just to open
the front gates of their oper-
ating farm or ranch,” Field
said.
Another popular loan
currently at play involves
a revolving line of credit
based on real-estate hold-
ings. The loan can also be
combined with a fixed-rate-
term loan.
“We can do two loans
and use just one mortgage
for it,” he said. “That combi-
nation is an incredible com-
bination for most of our ag
production people, and we
do an awful lot of them.”
Looking ahead, Field
said he sees continued vola-
tility in the marketplace and
“a lot of potential volatility
in commodities.”
NWAG19-4/HOU
By MITCH LIES
For the Capital Press