Wichita ? Boosted by record high cattle prices and a bumper wheat crop, Kansas farmers have paid off or refinanced most of their delinquent farm loans.

Farm loan delinquency rates soared earlier this year on the heels of two years of drought in Kansas, but the latest figures show more normal trends.

Some 203 farmers, or 6.4 percent, of those who borrowed money from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency were behind in their payments in September, according to the Farm Service Agency’s latest available figures. In February, there were 724 farmers, or 22.2 percent, delinquent.

The Farm Service Agency, long known as the lender of last resort for farmers, is the biggest single agricultural lender in the state.

“We are always working with the tough cases,” said Karen Eifert Jones, Farm Service Agency farm loan specialist.

Most farm loans are due in January, so the February delinquency number is traditionally high. But delinquency rates that high had not been seen in Kansas since 1996, when the state suffered major crop losses.

“There was definitely a higher peak in this year than there normally is,” Eifert Jones said.

While delinquencies typically fluctuate throughout the year as harvests are brought in and crops sold, this time the delinquency numbers remained in the double-digits throughout the spring and into much of the summer.

The September numbers are just slightly higher than the 6.1 percent delinquency rate for the same month last year.

Despite the return of dry conditions this summer, farmers have gotten some significant breaks lately that have helped many pay off their loans — or at least be able to afford to refinance them.

Among them is the emergency drought aid approved by Congress in February, money that farmers started receiving in June and July.

Some of that went to pay delinquent farm loans. By August, farm delinquencies noticeably dropped into single digits again in Kansas.

Another big income boost has been the record high cattle prices livestock farmers have been getting recently.

Kansas ranks second in the nation in the number of cattle on its ranches and feed yards — the state has nearly two and a half times more cattle than it does people.

“There has been strength in the cattle market — that has really helped lots of these folks,” Eifert Jones said.

The other factor that helped to lower the farm delinquency rate was the state’s bumper crop of winter wheat this year, she said.

Farm Service Agency has also been restructuring delinquent loans, in effect putting more debt against the equity that farmers have spent years building up, she said.