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“CO-OPS IMPORTANT TO IOWA” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H9383-H9384 on Oct. 5, 1999.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
CO-OPS IMPORTANT TO IOWA
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Boswell) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. BOSWELL. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be here tonight along with the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs. Clayton) and the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy) to honor and appreciate cooperatives across America. It is important to honor and recognize these valuable institutions, America's co-ops, not only during national co-op month but every day because of the importance they play in every community's life.
Years ago, farmers across our State, many years ago, had no place to purchase their inputs or no place to store their grain or to market. They were really at the mercy of a handful of people, and sometimes they could not even get their grain anywhere. Well, co-ops came into existence. They were organized across our State and across the land, and they are very important to our Nation and they are very important to our State of Iowa.
There are 47,000 cooperatives of all types in the U.S., and they serve 120 million in all 50 States. One of every four people in the United States is a member of a co-op. In Iowa, co-ops originate about 75 percent of the grain sold by Iowa farmers. Iowa's rural electric co-
ops, which the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs. Clayton) mentioned how important they are, they certainly are to me, I have three meters on a co-op line at my farm, serve more than 176,000 farms, homes, and businesses in all of our 99 counties. There are over 220 credit unions in Iowa that have more than 740,000 members. Iowa has 124 cooperative farm organizations that total 322 sites throughout the State. The bottom line is nearly everyone's life in Iowa is touched by a co-op in one way or another.
Cooperative associations can take on different forms within the communities they serve. Certainly they serve as business organizations, but they can also be the lifeblood of the community, providing the backbone and the strength to the residents of the area. Local control and local ownership make co-ops a special kind of business because of the commitment not only to the people they serve but also to the communities in which they exist.
Co-ops can take on many different functions in a community. In rural Iowa, where I am from, the farmer cooperative can be the center of many of the community's actions. I have said for a long time in farm communities today they need at least a minimum of two important things to do business: they have to have a bank and they have to have an elevator. And I would say very often a co-op elevator. Both are very important. They are a must to do business down on the farm.
On the business side, the farmer cooperative can help create a business superstructure for individual farmers or other cooperatives which allow for a more coordinated and efficient farm operation. They supply services and supplies that are essential to the day-to-day running of the operation.
On the personal side, they allow farmers the opportunity to join together to provide inputs in the market, share information, and provide co-op regional support. My local farmer cooperative in Lamoni, Iowa, is part of the reason I am here today in the United States Congress. Back in the 1980s, during the last farm crisis, my neighbors and fellow farmers asked me to serve as the president of their co-op. We worked as a community to keep our people on the farm and to keep our towns and our schools and our churches and our local businesses viable.
Co-op members have always helped each other make it through the tough times by sharing resources and experiences and helping each other work through the problems and struggles associated with crises. I can recall serving on the local co-op board during the farm crisis of the 1980s. It was a tough time, but I was sure glad to have the associates that I had. Now, American agriculture is again faced with a growing crisis, and again cooperatives will be there to lend a helping hand and, in many cases, the glue that holds communities together.
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By joining together and marketing their products together, farmers are better able to gain strength they need to compete with the large multinational corporate farming operations that now control much of agriculture.
There are going to be many dramatic success stories coming out of the current agriculture crisis, and once again it is going to be the farmer cooperatives playing a very significant role. Cooperation by whatever means and whatever name you call it, networks or co-ops, is what built our system of family farms in the Midwest, and they may well be the best strategy for preserving it to the greatest degree possible as we meet future farm challenges.
Once again I am pleased to join with the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs. Clayton) and the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy) to honor and appreciate the importance of America's co-ops.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I offer the following: ``I must study politics and war that my sons and daughters may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons and daughters ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.''--Letter to Abigail Adams from John Adams [May 12, 1780].
Mr. Speaker, Jamie Whitten, the former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and chairman of the Agriculture Subcommittee for forty years, said the only real wealth we have is the land. Much like President Adams, he believed that what farmers do provides us with the greatest security in the world--the freedom from hunger so that we are afforded the freedom to undertake other endeavors.
Farmer Cooperatives have been a real source of strength in the 20th century. They provide an opportunity for many small producers to band together to create strength among themselves for themselves. Farmers have been able to purchase supplies and sell product through cooperatives. They have banded together based on commodities or region for the betterment of all.
They also have been a vital source of development in rural areas with telephone and electric power services.
They provide collaborative financing for producers and rural businesses (Farm Credit Services).
There are more than 3,500 cooperatives in the US, with total sales of over $100 billion. They employ nearly 300,000 people, with a payroll of
$6.8 billion.
Cooperatives have been storehouses of ideas and innovation. As we see consolidation in the agriculture industry today, co-ops offer farmers the opportunity to vertically integrate and take advantage of profit sharing as a way to keep rural areas and rural families productive, while offering new opportunities for prosperity.
Farmers have been unfairly portrayed as unsophisticated individuals who could easily be fooled by ``city slickers''. The next time you want to talk with someone who is knowledgeable in cutting edge science, the intricacies of international trade, who is prepared to compete on a global scale, and must depend upon every available tool to stay ahead, you might want to think about Intel and Microsoft. But you would be wrong. The person you need to talk to is the American farmer and his co-op manager. There are no more savvy people like them in the world.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, October is Coop Month and I am delighted to join with my colleagues in recognizing the importance of cooperatives to our country.
The cooperative idea is as old as civilization itself. It began with people recognizing that by banding together for their mutual benefit they could achieve much more than they could as individuals.
When we think of co-ops in America we generally think of agricultural organizations who, beginning in the Midwest in the 1860s and 1870s, understood this principal and began to organize around it. Because of the foresight and determination of a number of pioneers in the Grange, founded in 1867, rural Americans began to enjoy the benefits of cooperative stores to serve their members with farm supplies and machinery, groceries and household essentials. Soon, farm commodities from cotton to milk to wheat were being marketed through co-ops.
In the following decades the fortunes of co-ops fluctuated, but by the early decades of the twentieth century co-ops had become the prevailing feature of the farm economy helping farmers not only with supplies and marketing, but with financing, housing and electrification. Today, Rural Electric Co-ops alone operate more than half the electrical lines in America and provide electric power to more than 25 million people in 46 states. In the field of telecommunications, cooperatives have become vital in ensuring that rural residents are not bypassed by the information revolution.
Today, co-ops are a common feature throughout both rural and urban America and throughout all sectors of the economy, while they remain a vital part of the food and agriculture industry. In recent years, cooperative members have been spreading that message abroad to the developing world and to newly-emerging democracies in Eastern Europe. And, with the help of Congress and the federal government, new co-op development is underway here at home through Co-op Development Centers and the Co-op Development Grants Program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture whereby small federal investments are helping to leverage substantial amounts of non-federal support to help start and strengthen businesses, create jobs and build communities.
In 1908, Teddy Roosevelt's Country Life Commission recommended cooperatives as a means to improve economies of scale, strengthen agricultural production and supply and promote infrastructure development. 90 years later, the National Commission on Small Farms called for increased federal investments to support rural cooperative development at the grassroots. While America has changed almost out of all recognition in the intervening years, the cooperative principals upon which much of America's wealth and values is built remain as important as ever.
Mr. Speaker, I am happy to help celebrate Co-op Month and to recognize the vital role that co-ops have played in the development of our nation.
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