Farmland Industries
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Farmland Industries was founded 1929 by Howard A. Cowden as the Union Oil Company. In 1935 it took the name Consumers Cooperative Association (CCA), and in 1966 Farmland Industries, Inc.
At its peak, the organization was the largest agricultural cooperative in North America, owned by 1,700 farm cooperatives in the United States, Canada and Mexico, which cooperatives were in turn owned by more than 600,000 farmer families. The cooperative provided both agricultural supply and marketing services ranging from petroleum refining, fertilizer manufacture, feeds, shipping, crop production, livestock production, and refrigerated foods sales and marketing. The company was a joint venture partner with a number of other companies, including: Archer Daniels Midland in grain storage, distribution and marketing; J.R. Simplot in phosphate production; ConAgra in wheat marketing; Land O' Lakes in feed systems and crop nutrients; Cenex Harvest States in lubricants, propane and refined fuels; Mississippi Chemical in nitrogen production and shipping (Trinidad and Tobago); Norsk Hydro in phosphate fertilizer production and marketing; Wilbur Ellis Company in crop protection product marketing and distribution; U.S. Premium Beef in beef packing; and Kansas State University in agricultural research. Farmland also owned Tradigrain, a group of international grain trading companies headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.
Farmland was a Fortune 100 company. In 2001, its annual revenues were in excess of $11.8 billion. It was listed as one of Fortune's "most admired" companies.
The company operated on a cooperative basis. The member/owners shared numerous commercial and financial benefits, including the sharing of costs for the processing and marketing of goods, competitive prices, and better supply and delivery capabilities.
The cooperative entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May 2002, after being affected by a prolonged downturn in fertilizer prices, coupled with high energy prices and captial costs. The reorganization process resulted in the sale of virtually all of the company's assets, including the following subsidiaries: Farmland Foods, Inc., the pork processing division to Smithfield Foods for $367M; Farmland National Beef Packing Company to US Premium Beef for $232M; and the fertilizer production division to Koch Industries.
The reorganization process resulted in the sale of the company's assets, with 100 cents on the dollar going to all of the company's creditors.
Farmland was headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, with branch offices throughout the Midwest and international offices in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Paris, France; Bremen, Germany; Budapest, Hungary; Almaty, Kazakhstan; Tokyo, Japan; Mexico City, Mexico; Moscow, Russia; Seoul, South Korea; Geneva, Switzerland; Kiev, Ukraine; Nikolaev, Ukraine; London, United Kingdom; and Akkala, Uzgekistan.
See: Beyond the Fence Rows: A History of Farmland Industries, Inc. 1929-1978, Gilbert C. Fite. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1978.
