Farm Credit East Marks 30 Years of Returning Earnings to Customers with Record Patronage Distribution

ENFIELD, CONN. — Farm Credit East, ACA, the Northeast’s largest agricultural lending cooperative, announced its distribution of $145 million in cash patronage dividends to 12,500 farm, fishing and forestry business owners and operators across the Northeast. The 2026 patronage distribution marks the cooperative’s 30th consecutive annual patronage payment.

A longstanding value of cooperative ownership, Farm Credit East customers share in the cooperative’s financial success through patronage dividends. This model enables Farm Credit East to offer competitive interest rates up front, and then through continued success, return a share of net earnings to customer owners via patronage dividends.

This $145 million patronage distribution represents, on average, a 1.25% reduction in eligible customers’ effective interest rate. Patronage payments are being disbursed to eligible customer-owners in late February.

“The board of directors is dedicated to ensuring that our cooperative remains a long-time partner to our members by combining in-depth expertise with financial strength,” said Board Chair, John Knopf, of Canandaigua, N.Y. “Our philosophy is to return any funds not needed to operate or capitalize the business to members — which we have done consistently for 30 years.”

“Paying patronage dividends is a fundamental component of our cooperative’s value proposition,” said Mike Reynolds, Farm Credit East CEO. “Strong growth, coupled with continued investments in strategic technologies, enabled us to achieve strong financial results in 2025. This patronage payment reflects our members’ trust in us and the strength of our cooperative model, and we’re pleased to share our success with members.”

Since the patronage program was first adopted, customer-owners of Farm Credit East (and predecessor cooperatives) have received more than $1.7 billion in dividends from ownership of their cooperative. 2026 is the cooperative’s 30th consecutive annual patronage payment.

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