USDA Business & Industry Loans by State: A Ranked Index, and Why the Obvious Number Is the Wrong One

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Aerial view of a wood processing yard with stacked lumber.

USDA's B&I program guarantees roughly $2 billion of rural business loans a year. Texas takes more than a tenth of it, ten states take half, and the federal database most analysts would reach for ranks the states on the wrong figure.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Business & Industry guaranteed loan program is the federal government's main tool for backing large rural business loans. It guarantees up to 85 percent of loans under $5 million and 80 percent of loans between $5 million and $25 million, and it finances everything from sawmills and hotels to grain processors and fuel terminals. In fiscal 2025, USDA obligated $2.1 billion of B&I loans.

Yet the question that lenders, investors and state economic developers ask most often has no widely circulated answer: which states actually receive the money? Federal budget documents carry the data. A trade association has published a ten-year view. USDA itself now posts loan-level records. What does not exist, as far as we could determine, is a reconciled, multi-year ranking of all states that is normalized for rural population and tested against official totals.

This article builds that ranking from USDA's own budget tables, pooling fiscal 2023 through 2025. It also documents a trap that would distort almost any attempt to rank states using USAspending.gov, the federal spending database: for B&I loans, the "obligation" recorded there is not the loan. The findings are straightforward. The distribution is more concentrated than most assume, single-year rankings are close to meaningless, and the choice of denominator reverses the story about which states are well served.

What B&I is, and what changed in 2026

B&I is a loan guarantee, not a direct loan. A commercial lender makes the loan, USDA guarantees a share of it, and the borrower pays a one-time guarantee fee and an annual retention fee. Under the fiscal 2026 terms, published in the Federal Register on March 9, 2026 and effective for fees from October 1, 2025, the guarantee is 85 percent on loans under $5 million and 80 percent on loans from $5 million to $25 million. The fee is 3.0 percent with a 0.55 percent annual fee, and a reduced-fee option charges 1.0 percent. A 90 percent guarantee applies only to high-cost projects in isolated parts of Alaska, a detail that several published summaries have flattened into a general rate. A small number of qualifying value-added agricultural cooperatives can borrow up to $40 million.

Eligibility turns on location. According to USDA's budget justification, eligible areas are rural areas outside any town or city with a population above 50,000. That definition is broader than the Census Bureau's urban-rural split and different from the Agriculture Department's own metro and nonmetro county codes, which matters for the denominators discussed below.

Two developments make the program's geography newly interesting. First, USDA's fiscal 2026 and 2027 budget requests both propose terminating the program, on the stated rationale that applicants can obtain financing in the private market. Second, in May 2026 USDA announced it had removed ten lenders from its OneRD guaranteed lending platform, including several large nonbank and bank originators, citing delinquent portfolios that it said held about $620 million, or roughly 47 percent of Rural Development's delinquent guaranteed loans. According to USDA, more than 750 lenders remain eligible. Whatever happens to appropriations, the lenders that drove past state totals are no longer the same set.

The trap: in USAspending, B&I "obligations" are the subsidy cost

USAspending.gov is the standard place to look for federal awards by recipient and place. B&I guarantees are there, under Assistance Listing 10.768, one record per loan, with the borrowing business as the recipient and a place-of-performance state. It looks like a ready-made state ranking.

It is not, because of how federal loan programs are accounted for. USAspending's own documentation explains that for loans, the obligation reported is the credit subsidy cost, the government's estimate of the net present value of expected losses, and that the face value of the loan is reported separately and is not included in obligations. For a B&I guarantee, the subsidy cost is a small percentage of the loan. We checked real awards.

Borrower	Action date	Loan face value	Obligation (subsidy)	Implied subsidy rate
THD LLC	Sept. 28, 2022	$4,600,000	$92,460	2.01%
1826 W Lucas Lodging, LLC	Oct. 27, 2022	$3,950,000	$84,530	2.14%
LWB LLC	Feb. 16, 2023	$23,300,000	$498,620	2.14%

Each obligation equals the loan's face value multiplied by that year's B&I subsidy rate. USDA's budget tables reproduce the same rates at the program level: a subsidy of 2.01 percent of program level in fiscal 2022, 2.14 percent in 2023, 2.29 percent in 2024, then a collapse to 0.20 percent in 2025. Summing "obligations" by state therefore ranks states by expected federal cost, and it produces a distortion that has nothing to do with lending. A loan made in fiscal 2025 counts for about one-tenth as much as an identical loan made in fiscal 2024. The 2021 core B&I cohort carried a zero subsidy rate, so its loans may post with no obligation at all.

The face-value field is the right one, and the evidence indicates it holds the gross loan, not just the guaranteed share. The $23.3 million LWB loan exceeds the largest guaranteed portion possible on a $25 million loan at 80 percent, which is $20 million. A second independent check agrees: USDA's own program-level amounts divided into its subsidy appropriations return the same rates that USAspending applies to face value.

A second caution applies to anyone pulling account-linked totals. In one sampled COVID-era B&I award, the federal account showed a combined obligated amount of $175,000 against a transaction subsidy of $87,500, a possible double count. Face value summed by place-of-performance state is usable. Account-linked obligation totals are not.

We could not query USAspending's interface programmatically for this article, so we did not compute state totals from it. The ranking below uses a better source.

The reliable source: USDA's budget tables

Each year USDA's budget justification for the Rural Business-Cooperative Service publishes two tables that matter here. The first reports B&I program level, meaning obligated loan principal, and the budget authority used to subsidize it. The second, headed as a geographic breakdown of obligations for guaranteed Business and Industry loans, reports obligations by state. We used the actuals from the fiscal 2026 and fiscal 2027 editions. State figures sum to the national total within $1,000 in each of the three years, and the fiscal 2024 column is identical in both editions.

Fiscal year	Program level (obligated loan principal)	Subsidy (budget authority)	Implied subsidy rate
2022	$1,777.4 million	$35.7 million	2.01%
2023	$2,043.1 million	$43.7 million	2.14%
2024	$1,828.8 million	$41.9 million	2.29%
2025	$2,111.7 million	$4.2 million	0.20%
2026 (estimate)	$2,091.7 million	$22.8 million	1.09%

The three-year pool, fiscal 2023 through 2025, totals $5.98 billion.

Several published figures conflict with these tables, and the conflicts are worth settling before any state ranking is cited. For fiscal 2025, the figure most often repeated is $3.5 billion. That is an authority or "allotment" number, and USDA's tables show $2.66 billion available and $2.11 billion actually obligated. Another widely repeated figure, $1.66 billion, is the fiscal 2026 budget's earlier estimate, superseded by the actual. For fiscal 2024, a 2025 industry-commissioned report prepared for the National Rural Lenders Association gives $1.80 billion in its text and table but $1.42 billion in one chart, and its stated average loan of $8.1 million works only with the lower number. USDA reports $1.83 billion. For fiscal 2023 the same report shows $1.86 billion against USDA's $2.04 billion, a gap of about 9 percent that most likely reflects a narrower "core" definition. We could not confirm the cause.

One more note on definitions. The budget documents use "program level" to mean available authority in one table and obligated principal in another. Anyone citing these numbers should name the table.

The ranking

Dollar rankings reward states with large rural economies and active lenders. Normalizing by population shows which states get more than their size would suggest. The table below ranks the top 15 states by three-year obligations and shows two normalizations: dollars per resident of areas the Census Bureau classed as rural in 2020, and dollars per total resident. All dollar values are in millions unless stated.

Rank	State	FY2023	FY2024	FY2025	3-year total	Share	$ per rural resident	$ per resident
1	Texas	131.5	254.5	289.2	675.3	11.3%	142	23
2	California	144.0	130.1	99.0	373.2	6.2%	164	9
3	Oklahoma	215.9	52.6	68.3	336.8	5.6%	240	85
4	Florida	74.6	110.8	112.2	297.6	5.0%	163	14
5	Louisiana	78.4	58.6	137.0	274.0	4.6%	207	59
6	North Carolina	113.8	120.0	26.9	260.7	4.4%	75	25
7	New York	66.0	37.1	144.6	247.7	4.1%	98	12
8	Arizona	100.9	55.2	58.7	214.7	3.6%	280	30
9	Ohio	59.2	61.6	83.9	204.8	3.4%	73	17
10	Missouri	49.0	70.4	84.9	204.2	3.4%	109	33
11	Illinois	31.6	55.9	112.4	199.9	3.3%	119	16
12	Kentucky	53.0	69.8	63.0	185.8	3.1%	100	41
13	Michigan	101.6	53.9	13.4	168.9	2.8%	63	17
14	Washington	93.9	30.8	36.3	161.0	2.7%	126	21
15	South Carolina	52.6	17.2	77.8	147.6	2.5%	90	29

Concentration is moderate, and Texas is an outlier. Texas takes 11.3 percent, almost twice the share of the second-ranked state. The top five states take 32.7 percent and the top ten take 51.6 percent. The remaining 40-odd states and territories split the other 48 percent. Only Texas and California ranked in the top six in all three years.

Single-year rankings are unstable, and should not be published as if they meant something. B&I loans run up to $25 million, so one or two deals can move a state several places. North Carolina fell 78 percent in a single year, from $120.0 million to $26.9 million between fiscal 2024 and 2025. Oklahoma fell 76 percent between fiscal 2023 and 2024, from $215.9 million to $52.6 million. Oregon swung from $72.0 million to $1.6 million and back to $67.1 million. New York rose nearly fourfold between 2024 and 2025. Several states show entries in individual years, such as $112,000 for North Dakota and $129,000 for Wyoming in fiscal 2024, that are far below any plausible loan size and likely reflect adjustments or modifications. A three-year pool is the minimum defensible window.

The denominator changes the story. On total population, the leaders are the sparsely populated and resource-rich states: Alaska at $154 per resident, Oklahoma at $85, Louisiana at $59, New Mexico at $49, South Dakota at $49 and Vermont at $49. Per Census-rural resident, the order is Alaska at $439, Arizona at $280, Oklahoma at $240, Louisiana at $207 and New Mexico at $193. Arizona and Nevada owe their strength on this measure partly to the definition: the Census treats many towns of 5,000 to 50,000 people as urban, which shrinks the denominator in fast-growing Western states even though those towns are eligible for B&I. We label the per-rural figure a proxy for that reason. No single number cleanly measures B&I's eligible population.

Some states receive nothing. Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia recorded no B&I obligations in any of the three years. Massachusetts, Montana and New Hampshire recorded obligations only in fiscal 2023. In fiscal 2024 and 2025, 41 states and territories had any obligations. Puerto Rico received $48.3 million in fiscal 2023 and the Virgin Islands $16.5 million, and neither appeared in the other two years.

How this compares with the industry-commissioned view

The only prior published state ranking we found comes from the 2025 report prepared for the National Rural Lenders Association by Summit, a consulting firm, and entered in the record of a September 2025 House Agriculture subcommittee hearing. Its ten-year core B&I ranking from 2015 through 2024 placed North Carolina first at $957 million over 200 loans, followed by Louisiana, Texas, Florida and Oklahoma. Eight of its top ten also appear in ours: North Carolina, Louisiana, Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, California, Arizona and Missouri. Kentucky and Oregon drop out of our top ten, and New York and Ohio enter.

The differences are mostly definitional. Summit covers ten years of "core" B&I, meaning the 1 percent and 3 percent fee categories, drawn from USDA's data gateway and records requests. Our window is three years and includes all B&I obligations, territories included. North Carolina's slide from first over the decade to sixth over three years comes mostly from its collapse in fiscal 2025.

An explanation sometimes offered for North Carolina's long run at the top is the headquarters of Live Oak Bank in Wilmington, which the company has said was the top USDA B&I lender by volume in 2021. The state series cannot test that. Whether obligations are assigned by lender headquarters or by project location is a question that only USDA's new loan-level data can answer, and we found no evidence for the lender-headquarters explanation. Summit itself noted that leading states tend to be those with large rural populations or substantial business activity in sectors such as oil and gas, tourism, manufacturing and agriculture, which does not point to a single lender.

The same report offers a caution that applies to every ranking here. It observed that while B&I guarantee activity has increased, the number of participating lenders has decreased, which may create geographic risks. The May 2026 lender removals make that observation more pointed.

What B&I looks like next to SBA

The series so far has concentrated on SBA lending, and B&I is its rural counterpart at a very different scale. SBA approved 70,242 7(a) loans in fiscal 2024 at an average of about $443,000, and 78,078 in fiscal 2025 at about $478,000, according to secondary summaries of the agency's reports. USDA does not publish B&I loan counts in its budget tables. The industry report counted 279 core loans in fiscal 2023 and 176 in fiscal 2024. Combining those counts with USDA's dollar totals implies average B&I loans of about $7.3 million and $10.4 million, roughly 15 to 23 times the SBA average, though the mixing of sources makes that an estimate.

The programs serve different needs. SBA's 7(a) funds Main Street: a restaurant, a franchise, a small manufacturer. B&I funds industrial and infrastructure-scale projects where a single loan can be larger than every SBA loan in a county over several years. A county that looks like a lending desert on SBA data may host a $20 million B&I project, and a state that ranks high on B&I can still be thin on small-business credit. Our analysis of SBA lending deserts earlier in this series made the same point from the SBA side. The two programs belong on the same map.

Where the program stands in late fiscal 2026

USDA's OneRD guarantee page, undated in the text we retrieved, lists fiscal 2026 funding for B&I of about $2.09 billion, of which $1.01 billion had been obligated and a further $0.50 billion was pending. The funding total is within $1.4 million of the budget document's fiscal 2026 estimate. The lack of an as-of date means the obligation rate cannot be placed in the year.

Context for reading any fiscal 2026 state ranking: the federal shutdown that ran from October 1 to November 12, 2025 may have delayed early-year obligations, though we could not verify its effect on reporting. In a February 2026 letter to lenders, USDA said its OneRD guaranteed portfolio had passed $12 billion in active loans, with over $1 billion delinquent. Trade press has cited somewhat higher figures attributed to USDA for May. In any case, the portfolio's delinquency has become a policy issue, and the 2026 lender removals reflect it.

USDA's budget justification documents do not give state-level fiscal 2026 data until the next edition. A state ranking for the current year will not be possible from the same source before the fiscal 2028 budget request.

What the index means for lenders, borrowers and state officials

For lenders, the practical reading is about durability, not rank. A state with consistent obligations across all three years, such as Texas, Florida, Missouri or Kentucky, has an established flow of deals and a working relationship between lenders and the state's USDA office. A state whose total rests on one or two large loans, such as Oklahoma in fiscal 2023 or New York in fiscal 2025, shows demand that appeared and may not recur. Those are different markets even when the pooled totals look similar.

For borrowers and developers, the per-resident measures are more informative than the dollar ranking. A project in Alaska, Oklahoma, Louisiana or New Mexico is operating in a state where B&I has historically been a large part of rural business finance relative to the population. A project in a state with little or no B&I activity, such as Delaware, New Jersey or Massachusetts, should not assume lender familiarity with the program, and the guarantee is likely to be one of few in the lender's portfolio.

For state economic development officials, the more pressing question is how exposed the state is to program changes. The administration has twice proposed ending B&I, and the May 2026 lender removals have narrowed the pool of eligible lenders. A state that depends on a small number of large B&I deals each year has more to lose from either change than the pooled dollar totals suggest.

None of this is a forecast. It is a way of reading the index that fits what the data can support.

What this analysis can and cannot say

It can say how USDA's published obligations are distributed across states over three years, which states are persistent leaders, and how sharply the answer depends on the time window and the denominator.

It cannot say how many loans each state received, because USDA's budget tables do not report counts, and the only counts we found come from the industry-commissioned report. It cannot say how concentrated lending is among lenders in each state, which needs the new loan-level data. The per-rural-resident figures use Census-defined rural population, which only approximates B&I's eligible area. Fiscal 2023 totals differ from the industry report by about 9 percent for reasons we could not establish.

How to replicate and extend this

Two sources can extend the analysis. The first is USDA's Lender Lens, which the department launched in January 2026 and which makes the full commercial guaranteed portfolio available for download to the level of individual loans, with monthly refreshes, according to USDA. Pulling counts, gross and guaranteed amounts, lenders and project locations from it would complete the picture and test the lender-headquarters question.

The second is USAspending, used correctly. A bulk download of loan awards (award type 08, Assistance Listing 10.768) for each fiscal year, summing face value, not obligation, by place-of-performance state, should reproduce USDA's totals within a few percent: roughly $2.04 billion for fiscal 2023, $1.83 billion for fiscal 2024 and $2.11 billion for fiscal 2025. A result outside that range would indicate reporting gaps in the database. Neither source should replace USDA's tables as the anchor.

Where the published record goes wrong

This series documents where commonly repeated claims fail against the data. For this topic:

USDA's B&I obligations in fiscal 2025 were $2.11 billion, not $3.5 billion. The larger figure is an authority number, and USDA's tables show $2.66 billion available.
The claim that USDA does not publish B&I data by state is false. Its budget justifications carry a state table every year, its Rural Data Gateway offers state and county views, and Lender Lens has posted loan-level records since January 2026.
Fiscal 2024 B&I obligations were $1.83 billion per USDA. The industry report's $1.80 billion in text and $1.42 billion in one chart are inconsistent with each other, and its $8.1 million average loan is consistent only with the lower figure.
The fiscal 2024 subsidy rate was 2.29 percent per USDA's tables, not the 2.38 percent that circulates.
Some summaries give a 90 percent guarantee for B&I loans under $5 million in fiscal 2026. The Federal Register notice sets 85 percent for loans under $5 million and 80 percent from $5 million to $25 million. The 90 percent rate is for isolated high-cost Alaska projects.
At least one commentary dates the 2026 fee notice's effect to February 2026. The notice states that the fees are effective October 1, 2025.
USAspending's "obligation" for a B&I loan is a subsidy cost of about 2 percent of face value, and 0.2 percent in fiscal 2025. Ranking states on it does not measure lending.
The industry report describes B&I eligibility as areas outside cities or towns of 50,000 or less. The rule is areas outside cities or towns of more than 50,000.
USDA reported 4,450 permanent full-time Rural Development employees at the end of fiscal 2025, nearly unchanged from the prior year, while the department's inspector general counted 1,745 separations at the agency in the same year. The inspector general counts employees on deferred resignation as separated even if they remained on payroll, which probably explains the gap.

Sources:

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rural Business-Cooperative Service, Explanatory Notes and budget justification, fiscal 2026 and fiscal 2027
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rural Development, OneRD Guarantee program page
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rural Development, Business and Industry Guaranteed Loan program page
U.S. Department of Agriculture, press release, "USDA Launches Lender Lens Dashboard to Promote Data Transparency," January 19, 2026
U.S. Department of Agriculture, press release, "USDA Revokes Approved Lender Status of Ten Lenders," May 12, 2026
Federal Register, OneRD Annual Notice of Guarantee Fee Rates, Periodic Retention Fee Rates, Loan Guarantee Percentage, and Fee for Fiscal Year 2026, 91 FR 11272, March 9, 2026
USAspending, Analyst's Guide to Federal Spending Data and award records for Assistance Listing 10.768
Congressional Research Service, Federal Credit Assistance and Grant Programs for Rural Businesses, R47438
Summit, USDA B&I Guaranteed Loan Program: Economic Assessment 2025, prepared for the National Rural Lenders Association, House Committee on Agriculture hearing record, September 18, 2025
U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census Urban and Rural classification
U.S. Small Business Administration, 7(a) and 504 activity reports and news release 25-83
USDA Office of Inspector General, Report 25-064-01, USDA Staffing Levels
Live Oak Bancshares, press release on top USDA Business & Industry lender, November 17, 2021
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