During the last year a farmers’ exchange in Beaufort County, N.c., saved its members and the farmers in the community between $75,000 and $100,000, according to a report to the United States Department of Agriculture.
The organization, formed to aid potato growers, has shown high proficiency in cooperation. Last season its activities were confined to the purchasing of 35,000 branded barrel covers and the selling of potatoes. Barrel covers were bought at a saving of $700, and 126 carload lots of potatoes were sold with a saving of $50,000.
A great growth in cooperative marketing and purchasing has been one of the outstanding results of extension work in the South. County agents, assisted by marketing specialists, through marketing demonstrations and by instruction and advice, have aided local and county associations of farmers in the cooperative selling of many kinds of farm produce and livestock, and in the cooperative purchasing of a great variety of farm necessities.
Farmers have gained knowledge of methods and acquired confidence in their ability to do business on a cooperative basis. They are beginning to undertake definite business organizations on a county-wide and even state-wide scale for the marketing of their main cash crops, such as cotton, tobacco, and peanuts.
Owing to the cooperative work in cotton grading, classing, and stapling and informatin given as to the market value of the various grades and staples by extension workers, it is estimated that between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000 were saved to the cotton farmers of Texas during the year in increased returns.
From The University of North Carolina News Letter, April 6, 1921
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