IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Jim Erickson
Southern States Cooperative, Richmond, Va.
im Erickson is director
of corporate
communications,
member relations and
public affairs at
Southern States Cooperative, a regional
farm supply and services operation
based in Richmond, Va. Erickson
recently announced plans to retire,
ending a nearly four-decade career
working with a number of co-ops
involved in activities ranging from grain
and milk marketing to food processing
and farm credit. He’s a recipient of the
Cooperative Communicators
Association’s Klinefelter Award for
career achievement.
After his Aug. 31 retirement,
Erickson plans to return to the Midwest
and will live in the St. Louis, Mo., area.
He plans to remain active in the
cooperative and agribusiness arenas
because, as he puts it, “After all these
years, I can’t imagine walking away
from co-ops cold turkey.”
Q. How did you first become aware of
cooperatives and start working with
them?
A. A friend from my days of working at
a daily newspaper in Illinois called me
one day in 1969 to ask if I was
interested in taking his place as director
of information at Michigan Milk
Producers Association (MMPA), a milk
marketing co-op based in the Detroit
area. He was planning to leave, and the
people there had asked him for
recommendations on a successor. My
response was I knew very little about
dairy farming and nothing about milk
marketing and cooperatives. He said if I
were interested and willing to learn,
MMPA had great people who would
teach me whatever I needed and wanted
to know. I ultimately took that job and
learned he was absolutely right. Jack
Barnes and Glenn Lake, then the
general manager and board president,
respectively, were the best teachers and
mentors anyone could ever hope to
have.
Q. What positions have you held
during your co-op career?
A. In addition to member and corporate
communications, I’ve worked in
governmental affairs and member
relations. I’ve had those responsibilities
at several different types of co-ops –
including MMPA, the Farm Credit
System, what is now CHS, Inc., and
Southern States. As a result, I’ve
learned a lot more about co-ops and
agriculture than I ever would have
imagined growing up as a city kid.
Although never part of my formal
responsibilities, the workshops in
board-management relations I’ve
conducted for co-op directors, business
writing classes for co-op employees, and
manager seminars on workplace
communications have been equally
enjoyable.
Q. Why did you choose to devote so
much of your life to working with coops?
A. That’s easy: the people. First,
farmers are absolutely great people to
work with. In addition, people who
work with cooperatives and enjoy
working with farmers have a lot in
common. I’ve also enjoyed the mental
challenge. Agriculture is technologydriven
and changes occur regularly.
Staying current with all that, along with
all the complexities of business
operations in general, keeps you on
your toes.
Q. How have co-ops changed during
your career and how has the
communicator’s job adjusted to those
changes?
A. As with most businesses, co-op
operations have become much more
complex. The pace of those operations
also has increased considerably, and
there’s much more riding on every
decision made. Those general trends
have affected everyone in cooperatives
to a greater or lesser extent. But I can’t
think of anyone whose job has changed
more than the communicator’s.
Consider the impact of the personal
computer on the communicator’s daily
work activities, for example. My
primary tools for getting the job done
more than 38 years ago were a phone
and an electric typewriter.
The phone still is important but my
phone today is linked to my computer.
That computer also has software for email,
word processing, graphic design
and publication layout, photo editing,
producing and using visual aids, making
and keeping track of my departmental
budget, keeping a data base of names
and addresses, and on and on. In short,
today’s communicator is much more
productive because of the technology
available. That’s good news when you
consider the greater contributions a
communicator can make to any
organization. But, depending on the
communicator’s career goals, it can be a
mixed blessing. If communicators have
the interest and abilities to take on
other management roles, they may find
such opportunities limited if they’re
viewed primarily as “techies.”
Q. What’s your most memorable
experience working for co-ops?
A. It’s hard to limit a response to one.
Let me list several:
Most stressful — Dealing with
communications, member relations and
public policy issues associated with the
dairy feed contamination disaster that
hit the Michigan dairy industry in the
1970s.
Funniest — The dark, cold December evening in southern Kansas when my colleague Jim Brownlee and I were
getting what we hoped would be
dramatic nighttime farm photos for an
introduction to an audiovisual
presentation. Trying to get the best
angle for a shot of new dairy facilities at the farm, I jumped from a large
concrete pad (where cattle were held
before milking) into what I thought was
a grassy area. The lights from the new
building didn’t enable me to see the
ground, but I knew it wasn’t more than
two or three feet down.
I was right about that…but instead
of landing in a grassy area, I went up to
my knees in manure. One of my shoes
came off as I struggled to get out and I
opted not to go digging for it. When I
finally climbed out, Jim and the farm
owner took me into the milk house and
hosed me off, which wasn’t easy,
because they were laughing hysterically
at the time.
The hosing down did a decent job
but couldn’t remove all the remnants
(read, odor) of my plight. In selfdefense,
Jim had his head out the car
window in the frigid air during much of
the 90-mile trip home.
Most rewarding – The success
Southern States had last year in getting
the Kentucky legislature to exempt
cooperatives from a new alternative
minimum tax, a levy that eliminated the
long-held principle of taxing co-op
earnings only at the member level. That
impact on co-ops was an unintended
consequence of a major tax/budget
package, and we were lucky even to
spot it in what was a lengthy bill. Had
we not been successful, the tax would
have affected the bottom line and
patronage returns of all co-ops doing
business in Kentucky. More important
was the fact the tax concept easily could
have spread to other states and affected
many other co-ops.
Most thought-provoking — Meeting
and getting well acquainted with the
late Jerry Litton, the U.S. representative
from northwest Missouri, who
convinced me early in my career of the
benefits the FFA organization provides
to young people. He was an
extraordinary example of those benefits.
Had he and his family not been killed in
a plane crash the night he won his
party’s primary election to run for the
U.S. Senate in 1976, I’m convinced he
one day would have been a presidential
candidate.
Most challenging — Those involving
member, employee and news media
communications when the co-op is
facing a major issue, especially financial
problems. My personal philosophy is
that an organization earns credibility,
and ultimately the support of its
stakeholders, by how it communicates
when times are bad, not when they’re
good.
Q. What is the greatest opportunity coops are missing when it comes to
communications?
A. As I just mentioned, any
organization, including a co-op, can
react in different ways when facing a
tough problem or issue. One is to
batten down the communications
hatches in the belief that what we don’t
say can’t hurt us. If the problem is
financial and costs must be cut, another
reaction is to consider communications
expendable. I would argue that
communications take on added
importance and value when the co-op
has problems. Failure to communicate
when the issue or problem is difficult
leaves a vacuum that something
inevitably will fill. If the organization
directly involved — co-op or otherwise
— isn’t proactive in its communications,
it’s a safe bet that rumors, innuendo and
other negative information will fill the
vacuum. That’s not only harmful in the
short term, it also chips away at the
organization’s credibility. Longer term,
loss of credibility is even more serious.
Q. Any advice for co-op communicators
that would help them do their job
better?
A. Build your own credibility not only
by communicating in a professional
manner, but also by learning the ins and
outs of the co-op and its members.
Communicators are in a unique
position to be a “go-to” person in a coop
if they prepare properly for that
role.
