AgGeorgia Farm Credit to Distribute Over $13 Million to Membership

Perry, Ga. (March 25, 2019) – AgGeorgia Farm Credit, a Georgia based agricultural lending cooperative, announced today that dividends totaling $13,572,002 have been declared by its Board of Directors, with receipt by members anticipated the first week of April.

“With so many of our members still recovering from the weather events of last year, it is a great pleasure for our board and staff to be able to return our profits to our membership,” said AgGeorgia CEO Jack Drew.

This marks the 31st consecutive year the cooperative has returned profits to its members through its Patronage Refund Program, with nearly $365 million in cash being paid out since 1988. The refund, from 2018 earnings, consists of more than $4 million in cash and over $9.5 million in allocated surplus, with the surplus portion to be used to maintain the capital position of the cooperative and returned to members at a later date.

“The patronage refund reduces our members’ cost of borrowing considerably, this year lowering the average member’s stated rate by 1.47%,” said AgGeorgia’s CFO Carrie McCall. “For every dollar of interest expense accrued by our borrowers in our general portfolio in 2018, 25 cents is being paid back to them.”

About AgGeorgia Farm Credit

AgGeorgia Farm Credit is an agricultural lending cooperative owned by over 4,500 member-borrowers, proud to have been helping Georgia grow for generations.  AgGeorgia provides farm loans for land, equipment, livestock and production; rural home mortgages, and services such as crop insurance and leasing.  AgGeorgia Farm Credit has 20 branches serving 79 counties in Georgia.  It is part of the national Farm Credit System, a network of financial cooperatives established in 1916 to provide a dependable source of credit to farmers and rural America.