Farm Credit Celebrates National Cooperative Month
Farm Credit’s cooperative structure helps us fulfill our critical mission assigned by Congress – supporting rural communities and agriculture with reliable, consistent credit and financial services, today and tomorrow.
We are a nationwide network of independent, privately-owned lending institutions in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. We are cooperatives – owned by our customers – farmers, ranchers, farmer-owned cooperatives and other agribusinesses, rural utilities and others in rural America.
This structure ensures customer needs always come first, and they share in their respective institution’s success.
The net income generated by Farm Credit institutions can be used in only two ways: retained within a Farm Credit institution as capital to build our financial strength, which ensures reliable service, or passed on to our customer-owners by way of patronage dividends. These dividends effectively lower the cost of borrowing for farmers and ranchers across the country. In 2023, Farm Credit collectively returned $3.08 billion to farmers and ranchers. Since 2012, Farm Credit has returned more than $21 billion in patronage dividends.
The Farm Credit Difference
Our nationwide network of customer-owned financial institutions offer a full suite of financial products specifically tailored to the needs of farmers and ranchers, farmer-owned cooperatives, agribusinesses, rural homebuyers and rural infrastructure providers.
