Kansas City, Mo. ? Former executives of Farmland Industries Inc. could lose millions of dollars in retirement benefits if the bankrupt company’s request to cancel them is approved.

The company wants to reclassify almost $17 million in deferred compensation and retirement adjustments owed to 138 current and former professional level employees, and to cancel life insurance policies for about 2,200 retirees of various levels.

Farmland also wants to renege on $2 million in “separation” payments it had planned to pay four former executives for leaving the company.

Kansas City-based Farmland, North America’s largest farmer-owned cooperative, has been reorganizing its operations and cutting costs since filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection May 31. A judge is to hear the benefits-related motions and objections Jan. 28.

About $900,000 of the separation payments were owed to former chief executive Harry Cleberg. The rest is owed to former chief executive Bob Honse, former chief financial officer John Berardi and former Farmland Foods president William Fielding.

Farmland would gain about $16 million in cash if allowed to cancel insurance policies it provides to some former executives and board members. The company would save another $750,000 a year by canceling term life insurance policies on about 2,200 retirees.

If Farmland is allowed to reclassify the deferred compensation, which is money employees chose to receive at a later date for tax reasons, those employees would become unsecured creditors.

As such, they would only be paid if there was money left after Farmland sells assets and pays secured creditors.

Secured creditors are owed about $663 million. Farmland’s 20,000 bond investors — classified as unsecured creditors — are owed more than $570 million from the company.

Some bondholders and former employees said it was only fair that those in the executive ranks feel the pain, too.

“As far as Mr. Cleberg and the rest of them are concerned, their retirement should go the same place mine did,” said Shirley Davis of Independence, Mo., a Farmland bondholder who could lose $60,000, almost all of her retirement funds. “I think we should all sink in the same boat.”