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market-farming - RE: new terminology, was tone and substance/NY Times

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Subject: Market Farming

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  • From: "Rick Williams" <mrfarm AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: new terminology, was tone and substance/NY Times
  • Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 19:59:21 -0500




> Successful marketing coops include the folks who
> bring you the California Cheese ads, Got Milk?,
> Sunkist(R) citrus products, Florida Orange Juice
> and so forth.

The Got Milk Ads come from the forced check off monies. Same thing with pork
and beef. The farmers have little control over this as the money goes to
marketing and advertising people who are well paid.

I am not sure about the citrus but probably similar.

I am familiar with the Ocean Spray cooperative with cranberries. (I grew up
in cranberry country and one of my friends family owned a marsh). Even there
problems have been occuring with the attempt to do supply management through
the coop and then you had the withdrawal of a number of farmers who formed
another group. You mostly see one of the two coops in the food store.

> The purpose of the coop is not to make profits
> and distribute them to farmers, but to make it
> easier for the farmers to make profits.

Without the coop marketing, it would be worse for most commodity producers
because you would still need to market your product and historically the
privates would take advantage of highly perishable product. Nothing is more
close to home here in Wisconsin than dairy.

But as they get larger and start making alliances, they dilute the power of
a local group of farmers who may not have the same goals as farmers in other
areas. It does appear that some large dairy coops, have used at least some
money that really was from midwest farmers and built new cheese plants in
the west. This is due to more milk being produced in the west because the
subsidies (promoted by the midwest dairy farmers) drove the market in that
direction even though it was an unintended consequence that the midwest
farmers did not foresee or felt that short term gain was more important over
long term security.
By keeping things as local as possible, you are able to maintain control of
the organization much better.

Even then, we have seen local coops go under due to management decisions
that proved to be in error. One of the successful farm coops in my area used
to handle fuels and feeds for years. A new manager convinced the board that
they HAD to get bigger or they would not be able to compete. So they doubled
their size and ran into problems.

If you want to know the local politics on how this stuff happens, being a FB
board member is an excellent way to get insider information. Needless to
say, they just don't publish this stuff openly because it is extremely
embarrassing to the directors who made the bad decisions.

Sincerely,

Rick Williams
Misty Ridge Farm
Dairy heifers and dairy beef graziers
Viroqua, WI

www.mistyridgefarm.com





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