Our scoring methodology for agricultural lenders — what we measure, how we weight it, and why our rankings can't be bought.
AcreCompass reviews agricultural lenders using a 100-point scoring rubric built specifically for farm and ranch lending. Agricultural lending is a specialized field — the criteria that matter for a small business loan (speed, online process) are different from what matters for a 30-year farmland mortgage (rates, cooperative structure, agricultural expertise). We weight accordingly.
We built our methodology around the questions real farmers ask us most: What's the actual rate range? Will this lender work with my operation type? How painful is the application process? What happens if I have a tough crop year? We weight our scores to reflect what matters most, based on ongoing reader feedback and our understanding of agricultural lending cycles.
Our scores reflect editorial judgment based on publicly available data, lender disclosures, user-submitted experiences, and our own mystery-shopping research. Lenders cannot pay for higher scores, favorable placement, or the removal of negative findings.
Each lender is evaluated on a 100-point scale across five categories. The weights reflect what our readers consistently identify as most important in agricultural lending decisions.
| Category | Weight | What We Measure |
|---|---|---|
|
Rates & Fees
The biggest driver of total loan cost over a multi-year term.
|
30% | Starting rate range, typical APR for well-qualified borrowers, origination fees, prepayment penalties, annual line fees, and rate transparency — do they publish rates publicly or require application before disclosing terms? |
|
Loan Products & Flexibility
Whether the lender can meet a farm's full range of capital needs.
|
25% | Range of loan types (land, operating, equipment, construction), term options, minimum and maximum loan sizes, LTV policies, and programs for beginning farmers or underserved operations. |
|
Ease of Application
Time, paperwork, and friction from initial inquiry to approval.
|
20% | Online application availability, document requirements, typical decision timeline, prequalification options, and whether ag-specific financial formats (Schedule F, FSA records) are accepted natively. |
|
Customer Service & Ag Expertise
Whether the lender understands farming and treats borrowers well.
|
15% | Availability of dedicated agricultural loan officers, borrower testimonials and third-party reviews, BBB rating, hardship handling (drought, commodity price crashes), and whether local relationship banking is available. |
|
Transparency & Disclosure
Whether the lender is upfront about costs, terms, and eligibility.
|
10% | Public rate disclosure, clear eligibility criteria, fee disclosure before application, sample loan documents available, and responsiveness to information requests from our editorial team. |
Overall star ratings are derived from the 100-point score: 90–100 = 5 stars, 80–89 = 4.5 stars, 70–79 = 4 stars, 60–69 = 3.5 stars, below 60 = 3 stars or fewer. We do not recommend lenders that score below 60 points — if a lender scores below our minimum threshold, they are not included in our recommendations but may be included in comparison tables for reference.
We use four primary methods to gather the information behind our lender scores:
We do not use lender-provided marketing materials as a primary source for rate or fee claims. If a lender's published website rate differs from what their sales team quotes during our mystery-shop calls, we flag the discrepancy and score transparency accordingly.
Each lender review follows a standardized, six-step process before publication.
Our most important commitment to readers is that our editorial scores and rankings are not for sale. Here is specifically what that means in practice:
We are transparent that on some pages — particularly "Best of" list pages — display order may reflect contextual factors beyond editorial score, such as affiliate relationship status, product availability in a reader's state, or minimum loan size relevance. When this is the case, we say so on the page. The editorial scores themselves are never adjusted for commercial reasons.
AcreCompass is reader-supported. Some lender links on our site are affiliate links — when you click through and complete a loan application or close a loan, we may receive a referral fee from the lender at no additional cost to you. Not all lenders we review have affiliate arrangements with us. Our editorial scores, ratings, and recommendations are not influenced by whether an affiliate relationship exists.
On pages where affiliate links appear, we include an inline disclosure near the relevant links. See our full Advertiser Disclosure for a complete list of our current affiliate relationships.
Lender rates, products, and policies change. Our update schedule:
Every page on AcreCompass displays a "Last updated" date so you can judge the freshness of the information yourself. We do not update this date cosmetically — it reflects when the underlying data was actually reviewed and confirmed.
We take accuracy seriously and welcome corrections. If you believe any information in our lender reviews is factually incorrect — including rates, fees, loan limits, or product availability — please contact our editorial team.
Editorial questions and corrections: editorial@acrecompass.com
If you are a lender or lender representative with a factual correction, please include documentation supporting the correction. We will review all factual correction requests within 5 business days and will update content and publish a correction note if warranted. We will not engage with requests to improve scores or remove negative findings; we will promptly correct genuine factual errors.
Have you recently closed an agricultural loan with a lender we review? Your real-world experience — good or bad — helps us improve our coverage. If your experience differed significantly from what our review describes, we want to hear about it. Reader experience data is one of four sources we use to score lenders.