agricultural cooperative

ASC 310-905 provides industry-specific guidance on receivables (loans, notes, and others) for agricultural entities, with dedicated Cooperatives—Patrons Subsections for patrons of agricultural cooperatives. Its core rules govern when a patron recognizes a patronage refund receivable and how a patron's unbilled receivable from products delivered to a cooperative is subsequently measured. Scope follows ASC 905-10-15.

ASC 325-905 governs how agricultural cooperatives account for investments in other cooperatives and how patrons (members) account for their investments in a cooperative. The core rule is that these nonmarketable long-term investments are carried at cost — including allocated equities and per-unit retains recorded at face value — rather than as equity securities, with the equity method of ASC 323-10 applied only in the infrequent case where the investor's share of the investee cooperative's unallocated retained earnings is material. Carrying amounts must be written down when the patron cannot recover full carrying value, and undistributed retains are classified as noncurrent.

ASC 405-905 governs liabilities of agricultural entities, with Cooperatives Subsections addressing how agricultural cooperatives account for product deliveries from patrons. When a pooling marketing cooperative's board assigns amounts to unprocessed products received from patrons, those assigned amounts must approximate estimated net realizable value and are credited to amounts due patrons, creating a short-term liability. Excess of pool revenues over assigned amounts and operating costs is paid or allocated to patrons pro rata, and retained allocated equities may be mandatorily redeemable instruments requiring liability classification under Subtopic 480-10.

This Subtopic governs how entities in the agricultural industry — principally agricultural cooperatives — classify and present equity. Its core rule is that cooperative earnings are split between patronage source earnings (from transactions with or for patrons) and nonpatronage earnings, and that allocated equities such as retained patronage allocations and per-unit retains are presented as equity when they have no fixed maturity date and are subordinated to all debt. Unallocated nonpatronage earnings are classified as retained earnings, and allocated equities become current liabilities only when the board formally acts to revolve them.

ASC 605-905 provides industry-specific revenue recognition guidance for agricultural entities, with separate General and Cooperatives Subsections. It requires government income replacement and subsidy payments (deficiency, disaster, and other program payments) to be recorded as additional income when the amount of and right to receive the payment can be reasonably determined (605-905-25-1). For agricultural cooperatives it describes accepted methods of allocating overall, departmental, and functional losses among patrons, equities, and unallocated retained earnings, and distinguishes patronage from nonpatronage earnings (605-905-45-1). Most of the customer-revenue paragraphs were superseded by ASU 2014-09.

ASC 705-905 is a "link-only" subtopic: it contains no substantive rules of its own and simply directs agricultural cooperatives to the guidance elsewhere in the Agriculture topic on when unprocessed products received from patrons are charged to cost of goods sold. The core point is that a COGS charge (and the related liability to patrons) arises only when the cooperative's board of directors assigns an amount to those unprocessed products.

ASC 905-10 is the Overall subtopic of the Agriculture Topic, setting out the background and scope for industry-specific accounting by agricultural producers, agricultural cooperatives, and patrons of those cooperatives. The Topic's guidance is organized into three Subsections—General, Cooperatives, and Cooperatives—Patrons—and provides only incremental industry guidance, so entities must also apply all other applicable GAAP (905-10-15-1). It covers inventories of agricultural producers and development costs of land, trees and vines, intermediate-life plants, and animals (905-10-15-5), but excludes timber growers, tropical pineapple and sugarcane growers, raisers of animals for competitive sports, and merchants/noncooperative processors (905-10-15-4).