CO-OP DEVELOPMENT ACTION
Driving Development in the Delta
Mississippi co-op organizations promote self-help recovery efforts following hurricanes
By Jane Livingston,
CooperationWorks!
frican-American farmers and other
rural people in Mississippi have
been overcoming hurdles in their
pursuit of prosperity for many
years. The devastation that
followed in the wake of the 2005 hurricane season
dealt them another severe blow. But within hours
of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita passing through,
people here were mobilizing not only to help
themselves, but to reach
beyond the state border
to their neighbors in
Louisiana.
One of the most
active first responders to
the crisis was the
Mississippi Association
of Cooperatives (MAC)
and its Center for
Cooperative
Development. With a
35-year track record of
helping rural people use
the cooperative business
model as a springboard
for economic development in the nation’s poorest region,
MAC was in a good position to offer help.
Center staff members Ben Burkett and Melbah Smith
traveled through the afflicted region, holding “Co-op 101”
trainings in mud-spattered tents in the temporary evacuee
camps, using flip boards and storytelling where no
PowerPoint could go, filling out forms with farmers using
pick-up tailgates as their desks.
Seeing results
Two years later, there are measurable results in both states.
MAC members, such as South Rankin County Farmers
Cooperative, are supplying fresh produce to farmers markets
that the Center helped
start or re-open. One of
these is in New Orleans’
Ninth Ward; the others
are in Ocean Springs and
Hattiesburg, Miss.
The Center has
also seen results from
working directly with some
of MAC's 13 members to
improve marketing
strategies. Producerowners
of Indian Springs
Farmers Association in
Petal, Miss., have nearly
tripled their annual sales.
Among their buyers: two
charter schools in New
Orleans with which the coop
created a business
relationship during the
past two years.
And with the
assistance of the Center
and the Mississippi
Department of
Agriculture’s Farm-to-
School Program, the co-op
has been selling produce to Mississippi schools for two years.
Producers have realized a 35-percent increase in revenue
from their co-op as a result of this program.
Another niche targeted by Indian Springs is the Gulf
Coast casinos, which were back in operation less than a year
after being virtually wiped out by the hurricanes. The co-op
sells them tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of produce
annually.
Co-op model for outreach
One of the reasons for the Center’s consistent ability to
provide the cooperative tools of self-help to the region's
farmers and rural residents is the value given to community
organizing as a model for outreach. This, and the legendary
abilities of such co-op luminaries as Burkett and Smith, has
attracted many allies to their work.
For example, they are working with Alcorn State
University’s Co-op Extension Small Farm Development
Center to help producers complete a marketing plan to
increase production at a local processing facility. They are
collaborating with the Mississippi Development Authority
Energy Division and USDA on constructing a 20-unit
housing cooperative in Holmes County.
They are also working with a faith-based nonprofit, Saint
Margaret’s Nursing Home, to develop an elder-care workers'
co-op in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward. The goal is to
provide top-quality cleaning, laundry and food services to the
low-income elderly who live there, and also to help the
neighborhood.
MAC and the Mississippi Center for Cooperatives
continue to inspire and assist rural Mississippians seeking to
improve their own lives and those of others, in the deepest
traditions of cooperative enterprise. Even in the face of the
severest challenges, the vision has held steady.
By uniting as farm families to create cooperatives, then by
joining those co-ops into associations, they have built the
capacity to make a difference on a regional scale. In so doing,
they have positioned themselves to become powerful catalysts
for change.
