First Posted: 4/20/2012

LUMBERTON — Two Robeson County couples, Gene and Susan Thompson and Patrick and Michelle Shooter, have successfully completed the AgBiz Planner program, which helps develop a strategic business plan for their farming operations.

The couples received guidance from loan officers working in the Lumberton branch office of Cape Fear Farm Credit. The AgBiz Planner program, a college-level course in Farm Credit University, was a collective effort of five farm credit institutions serving young, beginning, small and minority farmers in North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland.

In developing their business plans, the couples learned budget and management skills essential to their operation’s success.

Cape Fear Farm Credit is an agricultural lending cooperative owned by its member-borrowers. It provides farm loans for land, equipment, livestock and production as well as rural home mortgages. Cape Fear Farm Credit has branches serving Bladen, Brunswick, Columbus, Cumberland, Duplin, Harnett, Hoke, New Hanover, Pender, Robeson, Sampson, and Scotland counties.

For information, contact Skipper Jones, Cape Fear Farm Credit vice president of marketing by email at [email protected], or by phone at 910-323-9188, Ext. 3238, or Jim Haskins of the AgriBusiness Communications Group by email at [email protected], or by phone at 919-933-2327.