COMMENTARY
The extended family
No man is an island, nor is any
cooperative.
Regardless of what purposes cooperatives
serve, they are all strengthened
and the scope and impact of their
operations amplified through a supporting
network of private sector and
governmental organizations dedicated
to the belief that, through cooperative
businesses, there is nothing Americans
cannot achieve for themselves.
More than 120 million people are
members of 48,000 cooperatives in
the United States alone. Worldwide,
cooperatives serve some 730 million
members. Those are numbers often
trumpeted each October during
Cooperative Month. But they should
be cited in speeches and articles
throughout the year to help communicate
just how far-reaching the co-op
system of business has become.
Whether it is to process and market
their crops, to gain access to dependable
and affordable energy and telecommunications
services, to secure credit or
housing, or for nearly any other service
or product under the sun, cooperatives
are delivering every minute of every day
for their members. This wouldn’t be
possible without an infrastructure of
supporting organizations that do everything
from giving their member cooperatives
legislative clout to providing
director training programs and educational
materials needed to attract and
inspire the next generation of co-op
leaders and members.
A special section of this issue, which
begins on page 18, provides an
overview of some of the major organizations
supporting cooperatives and
highlights some of their recent accomplishments.
To provide an idea of the scope of these efforts, here are just a
few highlights from the special section:
- National Milk Producers Federation
is strengthening the dairy industry
through the Cooperatives Working
Together (CWT) program, a selfhelp
effort to balance milk supply
and demand, and by proposing
changes to the dairy price support
program that will prevent farm-level
prices from dropping below $9.90
per hundredweight.
- National Council of Farmer
Cooperatives is striving to improve
co-ops’ access to capital and is supporting
legislation that would eliminate
the third layer of taxes imposed
on farmer cooperative dividends.
- National Cooperative Business
Association has organized opposition
to a ruling that threatens to throw
the balance sheets of thousands of
co-ops into chaos by reclassifying
member equity as debt, and has
launched an initiative to expand the
role of co-ops in creating economic
opportunity in inner cities.
- National Rural Electric Cooperative
Association’s legislative and regulatory
efforts are focusing on controlling
costs for consumers, protecting them
against market power abuse and anticompetitive
behavior, and on preserving
the co-op governance structure
of its members.
We’ve also provided an overview of
how USDA Rural Development is
helping to improve the quality of life
and create jobs in rural America, and
in particular the many ways its
Cooperatives and Rural Utilities
Programs help the nation’s farm and
utility co-op sectors. Also check out
the Newsline section of this issue for
several news items that describe more
than $500 million in USDA loans and
grants recently awarded (or soon to be
awarded) for rural electric, broadband
and renewable energy projects.
Space didn’t permit us to list every
organization that has played a major
role in helping cooperatives. On the
agricultural front alone, the American
Farm Bureau Federation, National
Farmers Union and National Grange
have played key roles in helping establish
and promote cooperatives. So do
numerous other ag commodity boards
and associations.
Likewise, virtually every arm of
USDA the Farm Service Agency,
Natural Resources Conservation
Service’s RC&D committies and
Cooperative State Research, Education
and Extension Service, to name just a
few in one way or another impact
farmer cooperatives. You can find out
more about these and any other USDA
agency or program through the
www.usda.gov website. We’ve also
included websites and other contact
information for every organization
included in the special section, and we
urge you to find out more about them.
So, while “user owned, user controlled
and user benefited” remains the
mantra of the nation’s family of cooperatives,
let’s never forget that we’d be
a pretty dysfunctional family, providing
fewer benefits to fewer people, without
a solid infrastructure of supporting
organizations.
Dan Campbell
Editor
