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Thursday, September 4, 2014

Cooperation Is Key to Successful Farming Says Layton Pait in Winning Essay, 1935


Several thousand rural boys and girls wrote essays hoping to win one year of college tuition at any North Carolina college in the eighth annual essay contest of the North Carolina Cotton Growers Cooperative Association and the Farmers Cooperative Exchange. Layton Pait of Bladenboro took first place and used the scholarship to attend Kings Business College in Raleigh. Other top essays were submitted by Milton Lord of Cary, Grace Mewborn of Snow Hill and Loy Crowder of Polkville. The essays were judged by J.W. Johansen, extension economist at State College, chairman; Dr. G.W. Forster, professor of agricultural economics at State College; and Mary E. Thomas, extension nutritionist at State College.

“What a Unified Program of Cooperative Marketing and Cooperative Purchasing Can Mean to the Farmers of North Carolina” by Layton Pait of Bladenboro, as published in the September, 1935, issue of Carolina Co-operator.

Intelligent cooperation is the masterkey to a real, permanent agricultural prosperity.

When the farmers organize in cooperation in their common cause for mutual good and say together, “United we stand; divided we fall,” then will that promised better day for the tiller of the soil become a reality.

And this is the day of cooperation. The day of individualism is past. It is just as essential that the farmers get together and carry on their business cooperatively as it is for the business men and manufacturers and organize and cooperate.

In North Carolina farming is a real business; the North Carolina farmer is a real business man. Our State now ranks third in the financial value of its farm crops. The values of our different crops fore the last year were: cotton, $40,625,000 for lint and $10,368,000 for seed; corn, $38,540,000; tobacco, $122,142,000; peaches, $2,312,000; sweet potatoes, $4,314,000. We also have poultry, livestock, and dairy interests.

Let us consider some of the injustices and inequalities in the way the farmer has purchased his supplies and marketed his products. For generations, he has purchased his fertilizers, feeds, and seeds in the organized American markets at a high price level and sold his farm produce, produced with these production goods, in the unprotected worlds markets at a low price level, “at least 25 per cent below that of the first.”

Unorganized, No Bargains Power

Then, too, due to the lack of organization, the farmer’s bargaining power has been inadequate. He has been put to a disadvantage in dealing with buyers. As a rule, he has known little about the supply and demand of his goods on the market. Often he has not known what prices were being paid for products of different quality and grade. He has usually taken whatever the buyer was willing to pay; and, therefore, has not received the true market value of his products.

To correct these inequalities, to secure fair play for the farmer, a unified program of cooperative purchasing and cooperative marketing is essential. And we have an excellent foundation upon which to build. In June, 1934, the Farmers Cooperative Exchange, a model cooperative purchasing and marketing association, came into existence—the result of an extensive study by our State agricultural leaders. The Exchange has the consolidated and active support of the Greater University of North Carolina; the State College of Agriculture; the State Department of Agriculture; the State Department of Vocational Agriculture; and the State Department of Education. The Producers Mutual Exchange and the Cotton Growers Supply Company have merged into and have become a part of the FCX. The purchasing business which the Grange and Southern States Cooperative had built up in North Carolina is now turned through the Exchange. Truly it exemplifies the essential principle of unity of purpose and action.

Efficiency Through Cooperation

This consolidation and unification will eliminate competition, cross purposes, and duplication; and the highest degree of efficiency will be realized. As it grows, the Exchange can further consolidate the cooperative movement. It will serve as a marketing agency for those crops not now served by a marketing association. For the marketing of our cotton the Cotton Association is prepared to render even greater services in the future.

The FCX and the Cotton Marketing Cooperative are at our disposal. They are built on a sound foundation of deep fundamentals. In cooperation with our State agricultural agencies, they are working toward one goal—a better living for the farm people of North Carolina through a more economical way of buying the farmer’s goods, through a more economical way of selling his goods, through protecting his interests, through encouraging economical production and business management. They are the means of the farmers’ salvation. They point the way out.

What benefit and services will the farmers realize from this unified program of cooperation? In the first place, it will mean to the farmers an increased income. In the production of such cash crops as cotton, tobacco, and truck, heavy production expenses are incurred. For example, North Carolina farmers use one-seventh of the commercial fertilizer used in America and spend an average of $30 million a year for it. They purchase $11 million of commercial feeds and $6 million of seeds per year. These costs can be greatly reduced through cooperative purchasing. The FCX is not in business to make money. It is in business to help the farmers. Efficiency, savings, service, and quality are its goals. The Exchange furnished the farmers their production goods at cost, which is the wholesale price, plus operating charges. After taking care of operating expenses, however, the efficient branches of the FCX now operating in North Carolina are furnishing the farmers their goods at wholesale price plus five to six per cent. Compare this with what the farmers is paying who is buying through a private or time-price agency. He is paying from 20 to 30 per cent above wholesale prices.

Higher Quality

A further important advantage of cooperative purchasing is higher quality standards in farm supplies. Purchasing cooperatives mush handle goods that will give satisfaction. Every bag of fertilizer or feed with the FCX brand is open-formula—made up identically as the information on the tag indicates. The Exchange sees to it that the formulas used in making their feeds and fertilizer are those developed by the State Experiment Stations and from ingredients that have been shown to give the best results. The gains in production effected through the use of these reliable feeds and fertilizers, and seeds of known origin and adaptability, will mean more actual dollars to the farmers than the savings effected in prices.

Nothing now stands in the way of cooperative purchasing. The organization of the Production Credit Association tends to remove one of the greatest obstacles to the cooperative purchasing movement, namely, the crop mortgage time-price credit system. Now the farmer can borrow money at a low interest rate, operate on a cash basis, and purchase their supplies cooperatively. In a few years, he will not have to borrow money. He will have saved enough through cooperative purchasing and through the use of high quality goods to enable him to pay for his supplies out of his private bank account. “Then will be breaking the fullness of our day.”

Furthermore, in the FCX we can build a great marketing agency for our fruit, truck crops, and poultry and dairy products as well as a purchasing cooperative. Through organization we can face the markets as one collective body of sellers, and our bargaining power will be increased. Intelligent and alert cooperative sales managers know market conditions and can meet the buyers half way. A cooperative markets the farmer’s product in the most economical way and returns to him all that it sells for minus actual costs.

Cooperative Increases Net Income

The principal gain through cooperative marketing may be the development of a more satisfactory marketing service rather than an immediate increase in prices. Cooperatives save the farmers money in the assembling, grading, packing, marketing, and distribution of his products. Proper storage, orderly marketing, encouraging quality production, standardization of grades, advertising, keeping the farmers intelligently informed, protecting the farmers’ interests in legislation –these are services a cooperative renders which unquestionably increases the farmers’ net income.

This increased net income over a number of years will enable the rural people to enjoy a real prosperity. They will have better and more attractive homes, provided with modern conveniences and artistic furnishings. Each family can have a car, a radio, a modern bath room, and the service of electricity. The farmers will have improved machinery and implements. The farm women will be saved from a life of toil by the introduction of modern equipment and labor-saving devices. Neither extreme wealth nor extreme poverty will exist. But there will be contentment, satisfaction, and security.

Other Benefits

The social, cultural, and spiritual, as well as the material, side of life will be enriched. The farmers cooperating can have their local organizations and hold community meetings once or twice a month where the rural people—men, women, boys and girls—can meet and render interesting programs. Such local organizations bring the farmers together in activities that develop their friendliness, sociability, and cooperative spirit. The program will teem with visions of beauty. The great spiritual values of faith, hope, cooperation, and love will be emphasized. A love and appreciation of country life will be stimulated. Social activities and church work will be encouraged.

The rural boys and girls will become interested in farm life. They will be encouraged to join farm clubs and organizations. They will study farm problems and take part in educational activities. The spirit of cooperation will be inculcated in their hearts. In this way a real, intelligent farm leadership can be developed—a generation of rural boys and girls educated in the principles of cooperation, with a laove of farm life and a determination to do their best in making North Carolina and the South “a land of plenty, of beauty, of rural comradeship.”

“And this is no Utopian dream.” The farmers in the United States have demonstrated the fact that they can purchase and market successfully through their own business organizations. There are now 12,000 cooperatives in the United States, involving practically every type of production goods and farm products, with a membership of over 3 million farmers, and doing an annual business of more than $2.5 billion.

The 58 member service companies of the Illinois Farm Supply Company handled over $7 million worth of oil, gasoline, and other farm supplies for its members last year and paid patronage dividends amounting to $630,000.

The Eastern States Farmers Exchange in 1934 handled 313,684 cars of feeds, seeds, fertilizers, and other farm supplies for its 56,130 members located in New England and the Middle Atlantic States.

Over 18,000 Members

In 1922 the North Carolina Cotton Marketing Association was organized. It now has over 18,000 members. It does an annual business of $10 million. During its 13 years of operation it has handled 1,290,068 bales of cotton for its members and paid them $109,315,235.58. It has rendered real service to cotton farmers.

If the farmers of Illinois and the New England and Middle Atlantic States can purchase millions of dollars worth of supplies cooperatively each year at greatly reduced costs, and if the farmers of North Carolina can successfully market their cotton crop cooperatively for 13 years, we can support the FCX and purchase our supplies and market our products in the most economical, satisfactory, and beneficial way.

We must not expect the FCX to accomplish all these things in its first few years. It will take time. Twenty to 25 years is not a long time for a developmental period of this great organization. As their membership increases and as the years go by, the FCX and Cotton Association will render greater services and extend better benefits to their members. For, in the words of President Roosevelt, “Together we cannot fail!”

But the farmers must cooperate. No matter how hard our agricultural leaders may work to build up these organizations, if the farmers do not cooperate they cannot succeed. The FCX and Cotton Association sends a challenge to every North Carolina farmer.

Join these associations and be an ardent and enthusiastic member. Keep an interest in your cooperatives and in your country’s plans. Through cooperation let us build up here in North Carolina one of the finest types of civilization that the world has ever known.

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