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Eight Ways Into the State Farm Loan, and Service Is Not One

The agricultural loan chapter defines a new farmer by listing eight qualifying backgrounds. Military service, veteran status and the skills that come with them appear nowhere in the list, and no veteran preference sits in the definition.

Verified August 23, 2026

What this benefit is

What it's worth: No veteran route into the new farmer definition — qualify another way

The section defines "new farmer" as a new farm enterprise or a person who by reason of ability, experience and training is likely to successfully operate a farm and who meets the eligibility requirements of HRS § 155-10.
It then lists eight qualifying groups: persons displaced from employment in an agricultural production enterprise; college graduates in agriculture; community college graduates in agriculture; members of the young farmer association and national FFA graduates with farming projects; persons with not less than two years’ experience as part-time farmers; graduates from farm trainee programmes; persons who have been farm tenants or farm labourers; and other individuals who for the two years preceding their application obtained the major portion of their income from farming operations.
Military service, veteran status, active duty and reserve service appear nowhere in that list, and there is no veteran preference in the definition.
The definitions section was last amended in 2025 and still contains no such route.
"Part-time farmer" is separately defined as a person of proven farming ability who has operated their own farm for at least two years and derives between twenty-five and fifty per cent of their net cash income from farming — that two-year clock is the practical route a veteran would have to run.
The "qualified farmer" definition, which governs the main loan class, likewise contains no veteran provision.

Who is entitled to it

You served, which is the gate here.
Your home is in this state.

Not sure whether that describes you?

Answer a few questions about this benefit specifically — we only ask what this one actually depends on, and we stop as soon as we know.

How to claim it

1Pick which of the eight doors you can actually walk through, and start the clock on it. The part-time farmer route needs two years of your own operation; the trainee route needs a programme place.
2Do not present a discharge record as an agricultural credential here. The statute does not recognise it, however relevant the experience.
3If a farm trainee programme is available to you, treat it as the fastest of the eight — it is a defined route rather than a two-year waiting period.
4Ask the loan division which definition your application will be assessed under, new farmer or qualified farmer. They carry different tests and neither has a veteran limb.

File with: Agricultural Loan Division
Documents you will need: dd214
No renewal: Once granted it does not need renewing.

CorrectionVeteran farming guides that list state agricultural loan programmes as veteran resources are describing a door that is open to everyone and shaped for nobody in uniform. Reading the definition is what saves the wasted application.

Worth knowingThis is an absence in the definitions section, read in full. Whether a veteran preference sits elsewhere in the chapter — in the eligibility section it cross-refers to, or in the department’s own rules — was not established and is carried as a candidate.

Sources

authority · statuteHRS § 155-1 — Agricultural Loans, definitions

Why only one source type: The definitions section is the whole of the finding — the absence is in the statutory text itself, and no operating page can add to or subtract from what the section does not say.

This finder provides an informational match, not a government eligibility determination. The responsible agency decides your application.