Funding by industry
Farm funding, when the income arrives three times a year
Almost every fast funding structure is built for a business that banks something every day. A grower banks a few large settlements a year, with months of spending in between. That mismatch — not the quality of the operation — is what decides most agricultural files, and it is the thing to plan around before anyone looks at your statements.
Elora is not a lender, bank or broker. We coordinate: we prepare the file and introduce it to appropriate funding sources, who make every credit decision. Nothing here is an offer, a rate quote or a guarantee of approval.
The calendar is the file
An underwriter reading four months of a grower's statements is not seeing a business in trouble; they are seeing one slice of a twelve-month cycle. Whether that slice contains a harvest settlement or none at all changes the picture completely, and nothing in the statements themselves explains which one they got.
- Say when the money arrives, in writing. A one-page month-by-month revenue summary next to the statements turns an alarming gap into an expected one. It is the single highest-value page in an agricultural file.
- Timing the request is a real lever. Applying when the recent statements include a settlement is a different conversation from applying in the quietest month of the year, for exactly the same operation.
- The buyer's payment terms are part of your risk. Selling to a packinghouse, co-op or distributor means the settlement is a receivable: the crop left the farm and the money has not arrived. That gap belongs in the file.
- Weather losses read as decline unless documented. A hurricane or a freeze shows up as a missing month. Left unexplained it looks like a business shrinking; with the dates and a claim reference it looks like what it was.
The documents that move an agricultural file
More than in most sectors, the statements alone are not enough here — they have to be read against the season. These four do that.
| Document | Why it is asked for |
|---|---|
| Business bank statements — 6 to 12 months, not 3 | A short window can miss the whole harvest. A full cycle is what shows the operation as it actually is, and offering it before it is asked for saves a round trip. |
| Settlement statements or invoices from your buyers | Who buys, how much and on what terms. This is what turns a lumpy deposit pattern into a readable one, and it is the document growers most often do not think to include. |
| Crop insurance policy or proof of coverage, where you carry it | In a hurricane state, coverage is read as risk management rather than paperwork. Its absence is not fatal, but it will be noticed and is better addressed than left blank. |
| Photo ID, ownership percentage and the equipment or land you operate on | Identity, who is authorised to sign, and whether the ground is owned or leased — which changes which structures are even available. |
USDA and Farm Service Agency programs are a different route. They are applied for directly with the agency or its approved lenders, and Elora is not part of that process — we coordinate private commercial funding. If a government program is clearly the better fit for what you need, we will say so rather than compete with it.
Which structures tend to fit — and which rarely do
Fit is about how repayment behaves against how the money arrives. On a farm, the money arrives in bursts, and that rules some structures in and others out before any figures are discussed.
| Structure | How it behaves |
|---|---|
| Equipment financing | Usually the most natural fit. A tractor, irrigation system, cooler or packing line secures the transaction itself, so the review leans on the asset rather than on a deposit rhythm that does not exist for most of the year. |
| Business line of credit | Matches the shape of the year: draw for inputs and labour, repay after settlement. Harder to qualify for — it expects longer operating history and cleaner banking than an advance does — but it is what the cycle actually calls for. |
| Revenue-based advance | The worst fit for a seasonal grower and the one most often offered: a fixed daily or weekly remittance keeps running through the months with no income. It can work for an operation with year-round sales — a nursery, a dairy, a farm store — and rarely otherwise. |
| Term loan | Fixed monthly repayment against income that arrives three times a year. Workable where there is enough reserve to carry the quiet months; a poor match where every dollar of working capital is already committed to the next crop. |
We do not publish rates, amounts or terms. Those are set by the funding source for your specific file, and any figure quoted before underwriting would be a guess. How these structures differ, in plain English →
Why agricultural files stall
In our experience preparing files, most delays are not credit decisions. They are gaps that could have been closed before submission.
- Only three months of statements are sent. On a farm that is not a summary of the business, it is a sample of one season — and if it is the wrong one, the file is judged against an empty quarter.
- The farm and the household share an account. Extremely common in family operations, and it makes the deposits unreadable: nobody can separate a settlement from a personal transfer.
- The land is leased and the lease is not to hand. Whether the ground is owned or rented, and for how long, changes which structures are available. It is asked for late and found even later.
- An existing advance is not disclosed. Daily or weekly debits from another funder are visible in the statements. Disclosing it early keeps the file with sources that permit it instead of losing a week to a decline.
What happens if you start a review
You answer a short intake, upload documents through a secure portal, and a person — not an automated score — reads the file and tells you what is strong, what is missing and which kinds of funding source are a realistic fit. No upfront fees, and nothing at this stage affects your credit. If we cannot help, we say so.