New York, NY —

As big financial institutions have laid off workers, switched business models, or gone belly up, one New York industry has thrived, pulling in record profits. WNYC’s Lisa Chow reports.

REPORTER: Let’s put aside all these fancy terms, credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, de-leveraging, and talk about food. Or in this case, the apple. The stars aligned for New York apple farmers this year. The weather was perfect. The relatively cheap US dollar helped farmers find new markets overseas. And New Yorkers showed, with their dollars, that they like New York apples. People like Miriam Marcus, shopping in Union Square’s green market.

MARCUS: They’re very crisp and bright and crunchy. They’re not too sweet. They're almost on the border of sour. Just perfect.

GREGG: We’re growing better varieties, better quality fruit.

REPORTER: Peter Gregg is spokesman for the New York Apple Association, a trade group.

GREGG: Introducing new varieties that people are really excited about. That’s just really helped our industry just go crazy really over the past five years where consumer demand for New York apples is at an all time high.

REPORTER: It’s not just apples that are doing well. Agriculture, on the whole, has been doing well. Demand is strong, prices are good, and farmers are not running up against credit problems, the way other businesses have, despite the fact that they borrow a lot. Again Peter Gregg.

GREGG: Agricultural lending farm lending kind of operates outside the system a little bit.

REPORTER: Farmers get a big chunk of their financing from agricultural coops. These coops make up the Farm Credit System and can only lend to farmers.

NICHOLSON: Farm credit has not always been in good condition.

REPORTER: Joe Nicholson grows apples in upstate New York.

NICHOLSON: There have been examples of local coops that have lent money far beyond what they should have and so they made mistakes.

REPORTER: Farmers, and the coops that lend to them, went through their crisis in the 1980s. Farmland values were going up, more farmers jumped in to buy land, creating a bubble. The bubble popped and farms went into foreclosure. Sound familiar?

NICHOLSON: I think based on what has happened on the past, the system has corrected itself.

REPORTER: So as banks in the mortgage world were getting faster and looser with their lending practices, coops in agriculture were tightening their reins, sometimes frustrating farmers like Nicholson, who runs a 10 million dollar business.

NICHOLSON: There is always an adversarial relationship with a banker. The banker tends to be conservative and puts you on a tight lien situation.

REPORTER: This more conservative lending approach, along with strong farm balance sheets and implicit government backing, has maintained trust in the farm credit system and so far, is protecting farmers from the current credit crisis. The big question now, with the world economy in crisis, can even a well run business with good credit and secure financing stay immune? I ask the apple spokesman, Peter Gregg. Is the apple recession proof?

GREGG: It seems to be this year. I mean people still got to eat. And I think whether there’s a recession or not, they want to eat good food.

ROSEN: I’m a head hunter. And my clients aren’t paying their bills.

REPORTER: Sharon Rosen says she’s already scaling back.

ROSEN: I’m making sure to buy enough to eat, whereas before I used to buy and buy and buy.

REPORTER: Nicholson, the farmer, sees the risk … but he’s locked into a long-term bet.

NICHOLSON: When I plant a tree, I’m planting it for 40 years in the marketplace.

REPORTER: A lot can change in 40 years. And unlike Wall Street investors, Nicholson is committed, with roots in the ground.

For WNYC, I’m Lisa Chow.