The nation’s biggest farm cooperative has told its stockholders it won’t be a farm cooperative anymore when it comes out of bankruptcy next year. Farmland Industries of Kansas City says it’s getting out of the fertilizer, oil refinery, and regional grain businesses. The new Farmland Industries will focus on pork processing. Farmland’s board chairman has told representatives of the 17-hundred farm co-ops that have invested in Farmland that there might be nothing left of value for them. The company says that its debts will be turned into stock that will go to creditors, leaving them as owners of the company instead of farmers and smaller cooperatives that have invested in Farmland for years.
