Kansas City, Mo. ? Creditors of Farmland Industries, the Kansas City-based agricultural cooperative that went bankrupt four years ago, are getting $12 million in the sixth and final distribution of its assets.

The checks, which were being mailed Friday to 20,000 creditors, will bring total repayments to the 60,000 owed money by the cooperative to $891 million. The case represents one of the rare instances of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in which creditors were made whole.

The payments total 104.5584 percent of claims that were filed – the full amount plus the maximum interest allowed under Farmland’s Chapter 11 plan.

“We’re very proud and very pleased,” said Jeffrey Ayres of JP Morgan Bankruptcy & Settlement Services, which administered the liquidating trust responsible for marshaling Farmland’s assets and paying creditors. “Part of the success story is the former Farmland employees that we were lucky enough to retain. They were invaluable resources for us and very dedicated to making sure that creditors would get as much as they could possibly get.”

Ayres said that when JP Morgan began administering the trust in May 2004, it expected the recoveries to take five years.

Most the creditors are bondholders, owed $556 million, and trade creditors, owed $205 million.

Farmland’s preferred shareholders, who are owed about $100 million, are next in line to receive payments, with Ayres saying the first installment is due in December. He said he couldn’t estimate how much they would receive but it could be in the millions of dollars. However, those who owned Farmland’s common stock are not likely to receive anything.

The liquidating trust hopes to recover money from several lawsuits, including one in Las Vegas seeking damages for price-fixing against several sellers and traders of natural gas.

Farmland, once a Fortune 500 company, was the largest farmer-owned cooperative in North America, with more than 600,000 members, 14,000 employees and $11.8 billion in revenues in 2001. Hurt by a big drop in fertilizer sales, it had debts of $1.9 billion when it filed for Chapter 11 reorganization in May 2002.

The remnants of what was once Farmland are known now as Reorganized FLI Inc. Most of the money to pay the creditors came from two large sales, both before JP Morgan became involved.

In October 2003, Smithfield, Va.-based Smithfield Foods bought the co-op’s pork-processing business for $481 million. Smithfield uses the Farmland trademark on its Farmland Foods subsidiary.

In March 2004, Pegasus Capital Advisors bought Farmland’s refinery and fertilizer plant in Coffeyville, Kan., for $23 million, plus $85 million for inventory and $174 million in assumed liabilities.

At least two companies are considering making bids for acquiring the site of a former Farmland fertilizer plant in southeast Lawrence. The 467-acre site is poised to be put up for auction, and the companies say the site could be redeveloped.