AgChoice Farm Credit Receives the 2004 Agribusiness Achievement Award For Large Businesses.

Business Editors

HARRISBURG, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 12, 2004

The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, Office of Domestic and International Business Development, has presented the 2004 Pennsylvania Agribusiness Achievement Award in the large business category to AgChoice Farm Credit.

The award was presented at the annual Farm Show Dinner on January 9, 2004. The dinner was attended by approximately 900 people who joined Lieutenant Governor Catherine Baker Knoll, Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff, other public officials and members of the agriculture community, to celebrate Pennsylvania agriculture.

The Agribusiness Achievement Awards are presented to an agricultural, food, or wood products company that has made a special contribution toward the development and expansion of Pennsylvania agriculture. With regard to receiving the award, Allyn Lamb, President and CEO of AgChoice Farm Credit stated, "Receiving the award is a compliment to the nearly 8,000 active customer-owners of AgChoice who daily provide consumers with high quality food and wood products. This award is for them because they enthusiastically support the growth and vitality of AgChoice. As members of a customer-owned business, they understand the importance of cooperatively maintaining a consistent and viable source of credit and other financial services in rural Pennsylvania. They understand the importance that AgChoice Farm Credit, plays in keeping the infrastructure for rural Pennsylvania in place."

AgChoice Farm Credit currently provides $1 Billion in loans to production agriculture, the forest products industry, and to homeowners in 56 northern, western, and central counties in Pennsylvania. They also provide financial planning services, wealth management services, crop insurance, and appraisal services to agribusiness, forest products business owners, and farmers. In recent years, AgChoice Farm Credit has experienced double-digit growth by providing farmers and forest products professionals with lending and financial services that are custom-tailored to each operation.

Dennis Spangler, a dairy farmer from Union County, and Vice Chairman of the AgChoice Farm Credit Board of Directors, indicated it was his belief that the customers who use the services of AgChoice do so because of the extra effort the staff uses to create uniquely tailored loan packages for each customer "Our relationship-lending approach to our customer is a long term approach to doing business, and people just plain like it!"

AgChoice Farm Credit is a part of the nationwide Farm Credit System that has provided loans to American agriculture for more than 80 years. The Farm Credit System was organized to provide a consistent source of credit to farmers and rural America. AgChoice is a financial services organization that understands agriculture's particular needs and is prepared to consistently provide credit and related services.

As a cooperative business, AgChoice Farm Credit is owned by the customers who use its services.