Midwest Ag Finance Ecosystem

Five connected mods from Midwest Modding Studio that bring the business side of a real Midwest farm into Farming Simulator 25.

Real farms don't run on a single money counter. They run on a lender who knows their numbers, a dealer down the road, a sale barn on Saturday, an insurance agent, and a stack of year-end paperwork. This suite puts all of that in your game. It was built by someone who has worked as an ag lender and has run a combine.

Every mod works on its own. Install them together and they talk to each other: the bank finances what the dealer sells, repossessions go to the auction, your books feed your loan applications, and lenders require insurance on what they finance.

Rarely seen in FS25: seasonal equipment rentals billed by the hour.

Rent a disk ripper for fall tillage or a second planter for spring, run it for the season, and bring it back. You pay for the hours you actually put on it, read from the game's own hour meter, not a flat daily fee. Tractors and implements both qualify. It's how plenty of farmers really do it, and we haven't seen it done in another Farming Simulator mod.

What's included

• Midwest Ag Finance: the bank, seven lenders, loans, credit, and new-equipment dealers with ordering, demos, seasonal rentals, leases and trade-ins.
• Midwest Machinery Exchange: a living used-equipment market in the style of Machinery Pete, TractorHouse and Fastline.
• Midwest Equipment Auction: weekly online farm-equipment auctions with live bidding, proxy bids and consignments.
• Midwest Ag Insurance: per-field crop insurance and equipment insurance, individually or under a blanket policy.
• Midwest Ag Financials: a year-end Schedule F style tax return and a lender-style balance sheet, prepared automatically.

Also in the download: a Player Guide (PDF) with every feature and the full underwriting rules, and an Ecosystem diagram (PDF) showing how the mods connect.

Seasonal rentals, demos and leases

Click Buy on a machine a dealer has in stock and you get the choices a real dealership would give you:

• Rent it for the season: a three-month rental billed at 0.03% of the machine's price per operating hour, with the first 25 hours paid up front. A $100,000 disk ripper costs $30 an hour, so $750 gets you started. Run it as much as the season needs, then return it.
• Demo it: two days and 10 hours to try it out. Like it? Buy it for 5% off. One demo per model every 12 months, so you can't demo your way through the season.
• Lease it: 36 months with a 55% residual and 400 hours a year included. A $200,000 tractor runs about $3,210 a month. At the end, buy it for the residual or hand it back. You can also buy it out early.
• Buy it, buy it with a trade-in, or Finance it, which sends that exact build, options and all, into a loan application.

Machines on demo, rental or lease can't be sold, and missed lease payments get the machine picked up, just like the real thing.

Midwest Ag Finance: the bank

Seven lenders, each with its own rules

• Farm Credit Midwest and Ag 7 Credit: Farm Credit co-ops that pay a yearly patronage dividend of 15% of the interest you paid them.
• Mercer Credit Union: conservative and personal-focused, with home loans, personal lines and cards.
• Bushels & Barrels National Bank: fast decisions and the loosest credit floor, but it prices risk harder and loses patience sooner.
• John Deere Financial, CNH Capital and AGCO Finance: manufacturer financing for their own brands, with same-day decisions and promo rates (0% up to 36 months on Deere, 0.90% on CNH, 1.90% on AGCO) for borrowers with good credit.

Real underwriting

• Every application is underwritten on credit score, collateral, cash flow (DSCR) and leverage (LTV). Each lender has its own risk tiers, advance rates, down payments and minimum scores.
• Separate personal and business credit scores (300 to 850), built from payment history, utilization and account age.
• An approved-with-limit decision tells you exactly which limit you hit, the way a loan officer would.
• Rates move with a market index that shifts monthly, with the occasional shock. Fixed rates lock at closing, and eligible borrowers get offers to lower their rate when the market drops.

Loans and accounts

• Equipment, farmland, home mortgages, operating lines with use-of-funds audits, and credit cards with a real statement and grace period.
• Business and personal checking, savings, and CDs from 6 to 60 months.
• Liens in lien order, blanket liens on operating lines, sold-collateral rules, and an operator salary for full-time farms.
• Miss enough payments and you get a written notice, then repossession. With the auction installed, the bank sends the machine to the next sale and the proceeds pay your loans in lien order. Any surplus is yours.

New-equipment dealers

• Three dealers with real brand lines, each with its own floor stock: Apple Equipment Service (Versailles, Ohio), Star Hardware (Findlay, Ohio) and AgServe (Atlanta, Indiana).
• The shop shows each machine as In Stock, Dealer Order or Factory Order, with the delivery time and deposit.
• Order what isn't on the lot: 10% down locks the price, and you pay the balance on delivery.
• Trade-ins: trade up to four machines on one deal. The dealer pays off any loan on them, and negative equity can be rolled into a bank loan up to each lender's cap.

On the phone

With the LS Lifestyle (HS25) phone mod you get a bank app for balances, transfers, recent activity and quick loan payments. Loan applications stay at the bank, the way they should.

Midwest Machinery Exchange: used equipment

• Browse used machines listed by the three dealers and by private sellers across western Ohio and eastern Indiana. Listings are real store items, base game and mods, with their own age, hours, wear, damage and options.
• A market that moves. The season, your save's crop prices and what farms are buying and selling all push supply and prices. Listings sell to other buyers, drop in price, and come and go.
• Buy at the asking price, make an offer and counter, or request a quote on CALL FOR PRICE listings. Documentation and delivery fees are shown before you confirm.
• Sell your own machines: list one and wait for buyers' offers, or take the dealer's instant offer.
• Price history for everything sold, a watch list with saved searches and alerts, and an optional phone app.

Midwest Equipment Auction

• A sale every week, with a sale bill published three days ahead and a live sale day against 14 NPC bidders.
• Max (proxy) bids before the sale, or bid live on the Live Sale tab while you hear "going once, going twice."
• Consign your own equipment with an optional reserve. Seller commission is tiered (20% / 10% / 5%), and a big dispersal sale over $500,000 drops to 5% on everything.
• Won lots arrive at the shop as used machines, with their real age, hours, damage and wear.
• A buyer's premium on top of the hammer price, capped at $4,000 a lot. A Results tab shows your sale history, and the host has settings for NPC lots, fee level and penalties.
• Bid from the LS Lifestyle phone.

Midwest Ag Insurance

• Crop insurance per field for corn, soybeans, wheat, oats, alfalfa, sugar beets, potatoes, cotton and grass, at 80% coverage. Claims pay on hail and wildfire, plus high wind when Down Crops & Grain Economy is installed.
• Equipment insurance on four plans (Economy, Standard, Premium and Replacement Cost) that pays toward your workshop repair bills. Premiums are rated on each machine's value, usage and condition.
• Insure machines one at a time or put the whole fleet on a blanket policy; machines you buy later are added automatically.
• Works with Advanced Damage System, using its repair records.

Midwest Ag Financials

• A Schedule F style tax return (gross farm income, expenses and net farm income) and a year-end balance sheet (cash, deposits, equipment, land, buildings, livestock and stored grain, against loans, lines and cards).
• Prepared automatically at every year rollover and kept for 5 years. Find it under the Financials tab in the ESC menu.
• With the bank installed, a tax return on file speeds up business loan decisions and can count toward your income on loans up to $150,000.

How they connect

• Bank and Auction: liens follow machines to auction and get paid first from the sale, and repossessions go to the auction.
• Bank and Financials: interest, fees and patronage go on your tax return, loans and deposits go on your balance sheet, and your return feeds your loan applications.
• Bank and Insurance: financed machines must be insured.
• Bank and Machinery Exchange: the same three dealers sell new and used.
• The LS Lifestyle phone: apps for the bank, the auction and the used market.

Every link is optional. Run one mod or all five.

Recommended Mods (not required)

• Advanced Damage System, works with the equipment insurance - AdvancedDamageSystem
• Hashy Lifestyle mod, gives the ability to use the auction, bank, and used machinery mods on the phone - LS LIFESTYLE
• Farmland Market mod, when installed, the loan wizard will only show available for purchase parcels - Farmland Market

Multiplayer

All five mods support multiplayer and dedicated servers. Money moves and every decision are made by the server, and each farm has its own accounts, credit and deals.

The ecosystem has been designed with multiplayer and dedicated server functionality in mind. While the systems are intended to support multiplayer environments, extensive testing across dedicated server configurations is still needed. I encourage server owners to help validate functionality and report any issues encountered.

Compatibility

These mods are built to work together and cover everything a farm needs: banking, loans and credit; new-equipment dealers with ordering, demos, rentals, leases and trade-ins; a used-equipment market; auctions; insurance; and farm financials. If you run the full set, you don't need other bank, loan, finance or dealership mods.

Version 1 has not been tested with finance or dealership mods from outside this suite (for example Dynamic Dealership, Bank & Credit, Trade In Menu or Farm Savings Bank). Running them together may double up shop menus, loans or dealer stock. For the best experience, remove them before adding these mods to a save.

Other mods (maps, equipment, gameplay) work as normal.

Installation

• Download the zips you want and drop them into your FS25 mods folder. Don't unzip them.
• Enable them on a new or existing save. None of them requires another to run.
• Open the bank, the used market, the auction, insurance and financials from their tabs in the ESC menu.
• Server owners and single players can tune the numbers (rates, fees, dealer stock and more) in each mod's config folder.

Known limits in version 1

• Crop insurance pays on hail,  and (with Down Crops) high wind is in the process of being connected. Drought, flood and tornado coverage are in place but have no in-game event to trigger them yet.
• The bank's operating-line purpose audit checks seed and fertilizer purchases. Other purposes are not audited yet.
• On the tax return, farm expenses currently come from the bank (interest and fees). Fuel, seed, fertilizer and other expense lines are being added as each one is confirmed.