Farm business bitesdeeper into its borrowing facilities

摘要

Farm businesses are using an increasing proportion of the lending available to them compared with a year ago, although borrowing rose by just 1% over the year to the end of September.The latest Bank of England (BoE) figures show that UK farming and forestry businesses had borrowed ￡19.6bn from banks at 30 September.While this is a record, the sums have been on a rising trend for many decades.However, farms are using almost 86% of the lending facilities available to them, a far higher proportion than has been typical in recent years. For example, at the end of 2017, they were using 72% of their facilities, the same as a year earlier. By September 2019, the proportion had risen to 76.6%.