The early agricultural credit programmes suffered from a number of
naive assumptions, and were also cast in a decidedly unfavourable market environment. For example, in the 1950s and 60s a large number of
donor and government credit programmes attempted to stimulate the
adoption of new technologies and thus to increase on-farm production.
They were supply-driven, targeted to specific beneficiaries and/or commodities and often charged subsidised lending rates. They also failed to
reflect the key aspect of the productivity and profitability of input use
under widely varying standards of on-farm management, and the important signals provided to lenders when a farmer shows willingness to use
at least part of his or her own resources to purchase improved inputs.
(Roberts, 1975)
Further, the credit programmes were directed to an agricultural sector
that in many countries was experiencing strongly negative terms of
trade. The combination of unfavourable exchange rate regimes, punitive export/import taxes and tariffs, as well as domestic commodity
price controls, depressed earnings in agriculture (See Box 1, Schiff and
Valdes, 1995). The new technologies and input packages, however,
were just not sufficiently profitable at prevailing market prices. While
farmers could be bribed to accept the new technologies by subsidising
lending rates and soft credit arrangements which put little emphasis on
loan repayment, they were not committed to use these technologies in
case subsidies and soft credit were absent. Central banks provided often
concessionary rediscount facilities to banks for credit provision to targeted population groups and strategic agricultural commodities, while