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Show EIG GA!flS BY CO-OPERATION Kentucky State Agent Explains How Farmers and Merchants Can Profit by Working Together. How farmers and local merchants can co-operate to their mutual advantage ad-vantage was explained by Geoffrey Morgan of Richmond, Ky., state agent for the United States department of agriculture. The average farmer, whose knowledge knowl-edge of marketing is limited, feels that the local merchant has but one aim, and that is to buy his products as cheaply as possible, while the local merchant feels aggrieved that the farmers too frequently purchase implements im-plements and goods away from home. The solution is an organization through which farmers and merchants mer-chants may co operate. Mr. Morgan cited Borne examples of how local merchants mer-chants have aided farmers, thereby gaining their good will and increasing their own wealth. In one county they found the price of fertilizer too high. The merchants got together and arranged ar-ranged shipments that reduced the price, aided the farmers, unable to pay cash, to secure it, as a consequence conse-quence increasing their own influence in that territory and increasing the farmers' purchasing capacity. In another instance the county agent foresaw that many hundreds of bushels of apples vould rot on the ground because there were too many for the local market. He took up the proposition with the local merchants, who disposed of the apples at a fair price in a distant city, for the farmers, farm-ers, and themselves looked after the sortiug and packing. |