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Show FARM CO-OPERATIVE SELLING By GLENN G. HAYES . 1924, Western Newspaper Union. ) How Butter and Cheese Are Sent to Market T"AIRY farmers were the world's first co-openitors. Cheese was the first agricultural product to travel the co-operative road to market. Butter But-ter soon followed suit. Co-operative cheese marketing hnd Its start hack In the latter part of the middle ages. Swiss dairy farmers learned that the labor of cheese-making was greatly reduced If six or seven of them formed a group and each member took his turn at making the cheese for thorn all. Manufacture was the first step. Marketing came nest. Cheese rings soon discovered that traders would pay slightly higher premium for the larger quantities of uniform quality cheese than they would for Individual lots. They began pooling their cheese, and one member mem-ber with ability for trading would handle the selling of the entire lot. Co-operative dairying was next tried In France, then Alsace, Bavaria and Suxony. It was two hundred years later that American pioneers formed the first cheese ring. Until 1841 every farmer was his own cheese maker, but In that year a group of farmers at Lake Rock, In Jefferson county, Wisconsin, established a cheese ring and took turns week by week making the cheese. Immediately other cheese rings were started in the Berkshire Berk-shire hills of Massachusetts ami in a few years they were common in Connecticut, Con-necticut, New York and Wisconsin. Today there are approximately 4.000 cheese factories of which 2.r00 are In Wisconsin. One-fourth of these Wisconsin factories fac-tories are co-operatively owned and operated. The farmers deliver their milk every day anil It is made Into cheese and sold green. As the cheese Industry grew in the state, cheese boards came into existence whore buyers buy-ers and sellers met to make prices. One of these boards, the Plymouth Cheese exchange as It is called, came to dominate all the others. Irs price established the price level for all the cheese of Wisconsin. The farmers came to realize that the Plymouth board didn't always piny square, and in 1912, 43 local co-operative cheese factories revolted and came together to form the Shehovgan County Cheese Producers' federation for handling their own sales. In 1017 they changed their name to the Wisconsin Cheese Producers' federation. In 1021, 40 local units of Minnesota asked to come Into the organization. In all, the federation fed-eration now markets the output for 175 co-operative cheese factories. Members Under Contract. Members of the local units are under un-der contract to deliver all of their milk to the local association, which In turn Is under contract to deliver all the cheese made from the product to the federation. The local factory ships its cheese directly to the federation's fed-eration's warehouses and there it is Inspected and graded, weighed and sold or put into storage. The sales for each month arc pooled by grades and no attention Is paid to the Plymouth board prices. Across the continent in Tillamook county. Oregon, is a little dairy va"oy scarcely eight by twenty miles, half hidden among the mountains. Since the early days Tillamook farmers have been dairymen In spite of the fact that they couldn't make It lny. They thought co-operation would turn the trick, so back In li.'! they formed the Tillamook I)airy association to make butter. They rrarly failed. Next they tried making cheese and they failed completely. After another failure Willi butter the dairymen turned again to cheese. This time they had better luck. The manufacture of cheese was put on a paying basis. Today the association as-sociation owns 2." factories and ."" per cent of their cheese is sold to California Califor-nia brokers and the other per cent goes to Pacific coast markets. The receipts are pooled each month and the farmers are paid Just as fast as the cheese Is sold. In spite of the seemingly large quantities quan-tities of cheese sold through eo-opers-Mve organizations, co-operative cheese marketing has barely progressed beyond be-yond the building of a good foundation for the future. It wasn't long after the Swiss farmers farm-ers formed their first cheese rings until they began to organize co-operative circles for the manufacture ami selling of butter. This first adventure was not particularly successful not until after the Centennial exposition lit I'hlladclphla (I'd the Danes make a go of co-operative butter making. The iHinish comml-don to the expo-1 1 sltlon took home a full report of u 1 plan by which American cooperative i creameries in Orange and Iiutohess i counties, New Yorl -, v.. -re succeeding. ' In M-',H2 n co-operative creamery built 1 on the Amerlcsin plan was e tahlislied ' lit Illeddlng the lint in I icmmi ' rlc to i make a go of co-upc ration. In l!i'2l I there were I co-operative cream- I erics handling the cream of L'00,000 '. fa rmers. i Cooperative Liotter. In America the 1'hkI man to attempt elllng cooperative butler was Lewis ' M. Norton. e startetd a cooperative creamery at Uoslien, Conn, it failed, 1 In 1S56 a creamery wns started , in Orange county, New York, and I: j less than ten months co-operative j creameries were in operation in several sev-eral neighboring counties. Each was Independent of the other; each fixed its own standards and sold Its own product. This was the plan the Danes copied In 18S2. But they Improved upon It by federating to manufacture a standard product. In August, 102:1, there were 1.01(1 co-operative creameries in the United States and CIS of them were In the state of Minnesota. These creameries cream-eries are simply manufacturing plants for the making of butter. Most of them are nonprofit, nonstock organizations. organ-izations. After the butter Is sold and the expense of operation is deducted the proceeds are paid to the producers In proportion to the amount of cream delivered. The first state in the Union to attempt at-tempt the Improvement of the butter market was Minnesota. In 1011 the Minnesota Co-operative Dairies' assn elation was established. This was a commission house at New York that was started through the fear that the creameries would he driven off the market by eentrnllzers. One hundred nnd thirty co-operative creameries took : stock In the company. It buys up but-j but-j ter at the regular price and resells it in the eastern market. The profits are divided ' on the patronage dividend basis among the creameries and this la redivided on the same basis among the members of the separate creameries. cream-eries. In 1921 the 345 Minnesota creameries cream-eries came together for closer cooperation co-operation and formed a state group, the Minnesota Co-operative Creameries' Cream-eries' association. Inc. They divided the state Into 15 districts nnd each district employed a field man or Inspector In-spector whose chief duty Is to Improve the quality of the butter made In the creameries of his unit nnd to work toward its standardization. A small duty is charged on each pound of but ter produced during the year which pays the overhead expenses and the handling costs. In Other Sections. Minnesota Is not the only state that has established a centralized butter market. The Wisconsin Co-operative Creamery association Is organized on the same plan as the Minnesota creanV-erles. creanV-erles. In Iowa the Creamery Secretaries' Secre-taries' association lias been In operation opera-tion for many years. On the raciflc Coast the Challenge Cream and Butter But-ter association, at Tulare, has been marketing cream and butter since 1911. Where there are no co-operative centrallzers the farmers have organized organ-ized co-operative shipping associations. associa-tions. Sometimes these are organized through the state farm bureau; some-1 times through the Orange. Again the producers are affiliated with a produce shipping association. These loose-knit loose-knit organizations are responsible for slightly better cream prices, but they are not to be classed as real co-operative organizations. They are not the first necessary steps toward permanent perma-nent organization merely s means to an end. An effective system of cooperative co-operative manufacture of these twa products has been perfected but the marketing end Is still In its Infancy. Before the marketing of manufactured dairy products can be perfected, thers must be a general standardization and improvement of the product. Already another step has been take toward this goal co-operative marketing mar-keting associations have organized t sell through a national sales agency. |