Cooperating To Feed America and the World Mar 11, 2010 By John
Reifsteck: Champaign, IL The next time you’re at a grocery
store, let the cashier ring up the sale. Then try to bargain for
a better deal. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? After all, just a
handful of retailers sell over half of all the groceries in the
United States, and an individual shopper has very little power
to negotiate. That same imbalance of power is a real problem for
farmers and ranchers in the United States. Farmers are proud of
their independence, but millions of growers bartering separately
put them at a real disadvantage in the marketplace. That is why
they banded together to form farmer owned cooperatives. The
premise of a cooperative is simple- it is a democratically
controlled business that is operated to benefit those that use
its services. Farmer cooperatives were first organized in the
United States in the early 1800s, and really flourished later in
that century as a response to the lack of competitive markets
for farmers. Too