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B. Petitioner
Ward incorporated his business (petitioner) in 1986. Ward
bought a building for petitioner around 1988 and remodeled it.
Petitioner sold seeds, herbicides, fertilizers, and
pesticides to farmers in the Hastings, Florida, area. Petitioner
also sold farm hardware, tools, and implements. The vast
majority of payments that petitioner received were from the
retail sale of farming products to farmers.
Most of petitioner's customers grew potatoes. Some grew
corn or cotton. Petitioner's customers could not always pay
currently for their purchases from petitioner. Customers paid
interest to petitioner on their unpaid accounts. Petitioner
often required its customers to sign written contracts which gave
petitioner a lien against the farm or other assets. Those
contracts provided a security interest to petitioner in both the
current crop and crops to be grown in the future on specified
real property. The contracts typically provided that the
collateral was not subordinate to other loan agreements.
Petitioner's customers sometimes provided land as collateral.
One of petitioner's suppliers from 1986 to 1993 was Lykes
Agri Sales. It sold about $400,000 of merchandise on credit to
petitioner for each growing season (i.e., two or three times per
year). Petitioner sold the merchandise to its customers.
Petitioner gave Lykes Agri Sales a security interest in
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