Relation of Cooperative Marketing to the Adjustment of Agricultural Production

Abstract

The readjustment following the war period has brought to the front the importance of adjusting the amount and kind of production on the farms to the needs of the market. During this same period, cooperative marketing has experienced a very rapid development, particularly in the establishment of large-scale marketing associations. These enterprises in many instances have been launched in the hope that they would furnish a solution to economic problems of agriculture. This situation has brought us face to face with the question of the extent to which we may expect cooperative effort to be successful in stabilizing production. A brief statement regarding some organization fundamentals may be appropriate at this point. You are conversant with these fundamentals, and my purpose in making mention of them is that they may supply a background in delving into these questions. Frequent comparison is made between farmers and men in other lines of effort with respect to the extent of organization found among them. The customary purpose of these comparisons is to demonstrate that the tillers of the soil are far behind other interests in the matter of organization. In giving consideration to agricultural difficulties, the popular conclusion to arrive at is that the key to the situation is organization. The line of reasoning is that agriculture is unprofitable because it is unorganized, and that industry is prosperous because it is highly organized. If this conclusion were accurate, the line of action to follow would be self evident. But a person does not have to be a deep thinker or a learned scholar to realize that the explanation of prosperity solely upon the basis of the degree of organization