Our blog is an employee-owned endeavor aiming to foster greater discussion, innovation, and advocacy for the growth, development, and acceleration the co-operative movement.
Cooperative Investing. We have created the Northeast Investment Cooperative to collectively purchase, rehab, manage and sell real estate along our challenged commercial corridor, Central Avenue, in Northeast Minneapolis. "Investing Together for the Common Good." We want some skin in the game on our Main Street. We don't want 60% absentee landlords, 25% vacancy rates. We want businesses that we in the community can and will support, and that will be successful. (I couldn't figure out how to post)
Please email me at meludt at sign meludt dot com and we'll not only get you posted properly but get you some good answers and contacts. -- Matt
If you come to a fork in the road, take it! Imagine www.Cooperative-Library.coop
By Matt Ludt
What: An online wiki-style website that is organized sensibly by relevant jurisdiction, type of cooperative, and type of information. After an introduction there would be alternative options to zoom-in by country or language or topic. Under such there are alternative sub-options by sector or topic. For example, under “U.S.” there are sectoral links to Credit Unions, Worker Co-ops, Grocery, etc. and by topic there are links to Cooperative Finance, Member Linkage, Employee Training, Democratic Rule/Annual Meeting, etc. The topics include all business topics, formal legal & legislative policies, and the practices behind the each of the seven cooperative principles. And the depth includes not just documents but informational posts.
Who: A bit different from normal libraries where there a reference desk librarian to help you with your research, participating cooperators may serve a volunteer reference librarians. There would be the opportunity tag documents and information with the submitting individual and cooperative identities for users to contact them for further information. So better than a typical library, you have many more reference librarians to help you and you can have email/telephone/otherwise direct contact with the authors.
Why: The consideration for the 5th and 6th cooperative principles: co-ops across the world exchanging their issues, challenges and solutions for the benefit all. Imagine helping smaller co-ops to have access to the same information, documents, and education that larger co-ops have. Imagine the cost saving, time saving and efficiency, especially relative to the groupware, internet connectivity, and wiki technologies. A central location of how each co-op handles X, Y, & Z would be an amazing resources for improving all cooperatives’ performances on the triple bottom line.
How: While the maintenance of this library should be distinctly grassroots given its task to fulfill people’s and cooperatives’ practical needs, it would definitely need some functional support that can best be provided by the ICA.
To keep to the advantages that come from local control and familiarity, (to follow the hypothetical above) the U.S. Credit Union Association manages its own documents/learning summaries pages, the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives does the same for its docs, et cetera. If a country does not have a sector association, the relevant members from the national association form a working committee to do it.
The functional support though comes from the top-down ICA endorsement in a singular umbrella site where all cooperative learning can be found (like Wikipedia.org aims to do with encyclopedic knowledge). Further the support/guidelines are provided by a ICA oversight committee so that "tags" can be sensibly assigned so that cross-sectoral or inter-state/province/national exploration amongst the basic and advanced website search function yields relevant results.
Conclusion: In addition to the “Why” above, there is a superlative reason for this library: the cooperative advantage. When asked above, you were capable of imagining this cooperative library. But you would be stumped if I had suggested a library where investor-owned companies pool their proprietary and confidential operating documents and information for anyone to use, wouldn’t you? Our principles and refined way of doing business gives cooperatives this advantage, and thus we should take it.
If you could put a human age to the cooperative movement, what age would you give it? If you’re concerned about the lack of young professionals in your cooperative or on your board, you may be inclined to say that the cooperative movement is entering its golden years and is ready to go into retirement when all of your Directors, members, and the majority of your workforce does. I look at it a very different way. From my perspective, I think that the cooperative movement is entering young adulthood (in this instance I refer to 20-35 year olds, not the genre of books The Hunger Games falls into). I know that I’m speaking from a very subjective place, but hear me out.
The cooperative movement is going through the same challenge as I am: Looking within and building interpersonal relationships so as to better grow. There are many ways that cooperators could interconnect and grow, the possibilities are about as boundless as our imaginations and yet something holds us back from making this happen. Credit Union Service Organizations (CUSOs) are organizations owned by credit unions in order to provide goods and services that individual CUs cannot effectively offer, but they are still underused considering the large number of functions they can serve. Groups like the Cooperative Fund of New England have developed a Cooperative Capital Fund to help provide much needed equity-like investments to coops without compromising their inherent structure. A group called Principle Six connects consumers with a large and growing variety of coop-sourced products. In the Pioneer Valley, where I live, my credit union is part of a group of cooperatives that is starting the Valley Cooperative Business Association, a group promoting cross sector collaboration on the regional level. These are all great starts, but there’s a lot of work left to be done.
There is nothing corporations currently do that cooperatives can’t eventually compete against. I hope we source virtually everything from beer to mobile wallet solutions from cooperatives someday. The best part is that by offering these services cooperatively, we will have the ability to stay true to the concepts that make cooperatives so attractive to so many of us – an interest in more than just the bottom line, accountability to membership, concern for the community, member economic participation – all while lowering the total cost of goods and services and increasing efficiency, making cooperatives more viable and valuable for those who aren’t completely gung ho about them. Now is the time – consumers see the benefit in brands, products, and services with social purpose. Do you really think that if we had the same leverage and reach, we wouldn’t be preferable to corporations? There are many steps in between here and there, and they begin with building inter-cooperative relationships and establishing stronger cooperative bonds across all of our sectors. By doing so, we will get to know our movement a little better, so that it can enjoy its “young adulthood” in style.
I’ll be working for it. Will you join me?
[Guest Post by Sean Capaloff-Jones, who is part of the Cooperative Trust network, and works for Hadley, MA based UMassFive College Credit Union, a credit union and a charter organization of the Valley Cooperative Business Association.]
By Don Kreis, Guest Blogger & Assistant Professor of Law and Associate Director, Institue for Energy and the Environment, & Board Member of the Hanover Consumer Cooperative Society
When should a business enterprise be allowed to use the word “cooperative” in the name it uses to attract business? It is a question Vermont has just answered decisively – and in a manner that will protect the state’s co-ops from business organizations that claim to be cooperatives but are really something else altogether. Plus, in the process, Vermont may well have taken a bold and helpful step to resolve the ongoing controversy about so-called Limited Cooperative Associations.
Critics have argued that this violates the cardinal notion of a cooperative as an entity that is wholly owned by the people served by the co-op.
Act 84 addresses this problem by authorizing this kind of hybrid business organization to incorporate in Vermont but under a different name: Mutual Benefit Enterprise (MBE). And the legislation contains language specifying that neither an MBE nor any other business, regardless of whether it is incorporated in Vermont or elsewhere, may do business in Vermont as a cooperative unless it is truly a cooperative.
This may be especially important because, when it comes to Limited Cooperative Associations, Vermont is not just another state. A prominent Vermont attorney who had long been active in the cooperative movement, Peter Langrock, chaired a committee of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws that drafted the model LCA statute known as the Uniform Limited Cooperative Association Act (ULCA). Commonly known as the Uniform Law Commission, the organization seeks, according to its web site, to provide states with “well-conceived and well-drafted legislation that brings clarity and stability to critical areas of state statutory law.” The Uniform Commercial Code is the most well-known example.
The uniform law that Langrock and his committee colleagues drafted is detailed and well-organized. Justifiably proud of his handiwork, Langrock sought four years ago to get his home state to adopt the ULCA but the bill died in committee. Pivotal was the determined opposition of Laddie Lushen, a venerable cooperative attorney who, though based in Vermont, has long advised cooperatives around the country on organizational issues.
When the bill was reintroduced early in the just-concluded legislative biennium, Lushen again testified in opposition and described the ULCA as a “trap for the unwary.” The Neighboring Food Cooperative Association, which represents most of the cooperative grocers in western New England, raised concerns about allowing business entities with investor-members to call themselves cooperatives. The state’s agricultural marketing co-ops, including the one that owns the fabled Cabot Cheese brand, favored the legislation.
Lushen’s basic argument – that the law should not facilitate Faustian bargains between cooperatives and those who deploy capital purely to maximize return on investment – has the virtue of being resolutely principled. He correctly points out that, nomenclature aside, some co-ops may get into such arrangements without truly understanding their implications. On the other hand, Limited Cooperative Associations and their variants around the U.S. have always been designed to assist producer co-ops, which tend to be purpose-driven, as opposed to consumer co-ops, which generally hew more stolidly to cooperative ideals.
Considered in that light, Vermont’s Act 84 can be seen as an acknowledgement by producer and wholesale co-ops that diluting the meaning of the word “cooperatives” would hit the consumer co-ops where it truly hurts. For the most part, consumers don’t seem to care much that their Ocean Spray cranberry juice is marketed by a co-op. Nor will it make much difference to a consumer if her loved ones gather to bid her farewell at a funeral home that relies on a co-op for HR and marketing services. (The latter is not exactly a random reference – Wilson Beebe, chairman of the National Cooperative Business Association, is president of such a co-op, located in New Jersey.) Consumer co-ops, by contrast, know that what allows them to compete successfully with their investor-owned competition is the trust that consumers place in a store that calls itself a cooperative.
So, Vermont’s Act 84 is arguably a win-win. The big producer co-ops get their mechanism for attracting capital. And the consumer cooperatives get to keep their good name.
Ditch your Bank, And the Current Economy – Moses Coady Revisited
By Matt Ludt
I screwed up in my last post. After including the Moses Coady excerpt about the Great Default of the People I teased a follow-up post explaining the Great Default -- I was very excited by the opportunity to revisit Coady’s ideas!
Here’s the excerpt I had in mind, the one that really reveals the underpinning of Coady’s conclusion of where our society went wrong:
In those frontier times the great default was deviating from the common collaboration. In times where field-clearing, house building, barn raising, and harvesting were community joint-ventures, these communities defaulted on their right to oversee the fulfillment of the communities’ needs by indulging and accepting these entrepreneurships. The quick criticism of this perspective is the promise of competition within the capitalist system. Coady responds to this criticism here:
“If the early business men foresaw the possible consequences of what they had begun, they salved their consciences with a convenient theory—the theory of laissez faire. Competition, they virtuously declared, would take care of any irregularities that might arise. If one dealer charged excessive prices, someone else would go into the business and sell below him. The slogan was ‘Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost!’ Could any theory be more crude or unscientific! As well try to fix a watch with a crowbar as to regulate the delicate economic machine with competition.”
As I wrote last week “the foundation of our society is still unsound; the truth is gaining wider acceptance that Civilization’s best programs cannot fix what is fundamentally flawed.” So long as we continue to indulge such private individual or corporate enterprise in favor of a co-operative economy, we will continue to suffer the ills of society.
Previously I asked the question of why and how do we educate within the cooperative sector. It is absolutely critical to do education "right" in order to remind individuals why the cooperative movement exists. This is especially critical to guarantee the movement stays true to its roots and grows.
If I had to condense my philosophy on the matter of co-ops, I would say they exist to institutionalize community development. That means building an interconnected network of autonomous organizations dedicated to social system change, localized control, and most importantly for building individual civic capacity.
We do this through education. How we do education (pedagogy) matters.
A critical education
is a continuous process of what they (proponents) call "unlearning," "learning," and "relearning," "reflection," "evaluation," and the impact that these actions have on the students, in particular students whom they believe have been historically and continue to be disenfranchised by what they call "traditional schooling."
The critical approach attempts to make the student think deeply about the norms and biases they bring to a social movement. For example, a white student may not realize they are internalizing anti-white racial biases, and a wealthy child may not be able to empathize with the poor due to their upbringing. The idea is that by engaging the students to think about their own norms, they development a strong critical consciousness. Part of this consciousness is meant to engage the student to think about how social structures and systems effect their day to day lives, and how such system can be influenced by the individual.
A critical education is about how educators empower the powerless to do for themselves via working with others.
I must then ask the obvious question: how do cooperatives do critical education?
Get rid of the one owner who makes more money by keeping wages down. Then replace that owner with hundreds of owners!
That's what the folks at Black Star Brew Pub in Austin, Texas did (well, they didn't kick out the owner so much as started their own brew pub from scratch, but you get the point). The pub is an innovative co-op model in that the workers own it with the consumers. So the person serving you the beer has an incentive to guarantee quality service (they are after all serving an owner), and the consumer has an incentive to make sure the workers and the product are top notch (hey, they own the business too, and no one wants to own a shoddy store).
When the workers and the consumers own the business together as a coop, you all of a sudden have a workplace where people work together for mutual gain. That means exploitation, alienation, and conflict are dramatically reduced, community is fostered, and people learn how to work together.
Say... why aren't they teaching brew pub co-ops in Civics 101 classes?!
“Frontier Capitalism” is the label that Naomi Klein* has affixed to our current economy. She posits that the inherent but limited rules of Laissez Faire capitalism leaves production and consumption to be no more sophisticated than what the people, such as North American settlers during the 1800’s, recognized as the Industrial Revolution set in.** It is this label that she’s applied to not just the current economic misgivings of the U. S. but the modern globalized economy in general.
“By this indifference or lack of foresight, the people relinquished their consumer rights, which were all that had remained to them. Before the industrial revolution, they had domestic economy or home production. Shoes, clothing, foodstuffs—everything needed for subsistence living—was made or produced at home. Even then, a few enterprising people saw opportunities for profit in servicing the rest. They set up grist mills, blacksmith shops, and the like, and the people gave them carte blanche to do so. But results were not disastrous. The system was still one of small-scale production, and it could not grow indefinitely. Then came Watt and Whitney and Hargreaves and the factories, and production was taken from the homes and small establishments and concentrated in the large centers. Production soon slipped out of the control of the people. Consumption only was left—and they sacrificed even that when they saw the ambitious camp-follower build his first log store and write his own price tags. This was their great default. They failed to claim control of their consumer business and of their own money, and allowed an error to creep into the foundation of our economic structure.”
“This idea of the default may be brought out more clearly by an example from the material world about us. Suppose a man wants to build a smokestack 150 feet high. In laying the foundation, his workmen are careless and allow it to get somewhat out of plumb. The mistake is scarcely visible to the naked eye at first. When the stack is thirty feet high, it is clear that it tilts a little, but it is still firm and so the building goes on. But by the time it has gone up one hundred and fifty feet, it has become a dizzily leaning tower! The very builders are afraid of it. It is an ominous threatening thing. They hasten to prop it up. Finding no props long enough, they resort to guy wires. Long, heavy wires are anchored into the ground and attached to the stack, not far from the top. There is now less danger of catastrophe but the structure is still far from safe. It leans crazily, menacing all within range, for it has grown beyond their power to repair it as it stands. It has to be rebuilt to be put back into plumb. The economic smokestack that we have built in the last 150 years is just such a leaning menace. In the beginning, an error was allowed to creep in and the structure rose at an angle that grew more and more apparent as time went on. When the people awoke to a realization of their peril they ran for the guy wires to hold up the leaning terror. The various handouts and pensions, unemployment insurance and the rusty old wire of the dole were prominent, but the ugly thing they had allowed to grow out of their control now hangs over us all—a threatening monstrosity.”
The error in the “foundation of our economic structure” includes permitting individual capitalists to seize business opportunities. While the error may have started on the plains and in the frontier towns, it expanded to the investor and monied interests of the cattle, railroad, gold, lumber, fur, and oil industries of the 1800’s. The error and its threats are seen today in the technology (the late 1990’s tech bubble), telecommunications (Worldcom), energy (Enron, BP, and oil in general), housing (the current housing market), and finance industries (Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, TARP, AIG, and a $2 Billion loss by JP Morgan Chase, which JPMC didn’t even see coming).
I’ll leave you with the following tease of my next post: What was and is people’s great default? And what does Coady suggest by the title of his book?
Citations & Notes:
* Klein, Naomi, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” Metropolitan Books (September 18, 2007), ISBN-10: 0805079831, ISBN-13: 978-0805079838.
** The frontier capitalism analysis applies to more than the U.S. and its history; many countries have recognized such periods of development.
*** Note that the link above and here for “Masters of their own Destiny” by M. M. Coady will take you to the www.Scribd.com website with the full text of the book, which may be read online or downloaded as text or pdf.
In his most recent book, "Local Dollars, Local Sense"-- How to Shift Your Money from Wall Street to Main Street and Achieve Real Prosperity-- Michael Shuman makes a convincing case as to how and why we need to focus on local investing. Of course for me the third chapter, The Hidden Power of Cooperatives is the most compelling.
For far too long I have heard comments similar to the "Hidden" word in the title. Cooperatives are often described as the best kept secret. I ask why are we a secret? What can we do to remove hidden the cloak of misunderstanding that surrounds our business model?
I have also heard cooperatives act ethically and responsibly because it is in our DNA. When is the last time someone saw your DNA?
So if those of us that believe in the cooperative business model are reluctant to identify our businesses as co-ops and patronize other co-ops how can we expect others to do so?
By opening investment opportunities in co-ops is one way we can begin to open up the business model to a whole new generation of potential supporters and advocates.
It is easy to believe the economy we inherited is simply the way it has always been and will ever be. An economy where a huge portion of wealth generated locally goes outside our community. Most often this occurs via our investment dollars through 401(k) plans to who knows where to do who knows what.
Amy Cortese, the author of "Locavesting" said, "The crazy thing is it’s easier for most people to invest in a company halfway across the world than in their own backyard."
I am tired of it. Tired of giving my money to people I don't know, to people and institutions I don't trust. How can I trust someone I don't know? We willingly ceded this control we can just as willingly take it back.
Next Post: "It's not my fault, it was like that when I got here"
The great thing about co-ops is they can really encourage folks to just get on and do the job. I just loved the story of the folks just put the poles and cable spools in the back of a pickup truck to set up their electricity network.
One of the great co-op stories here in Scotland has been the development of Business Rings. Members of rings are both ‘suppliers’ and ‘demanders’ of services provided by folks themselves, or folks and their machines.
When there is more than one supplier offering to do the job, the Ring will help the member choose by advising on the closest and/or the most suitable machine, skills or services. The ultimate choice belongs to the demander.
The rings provide an easy way for skilled labour to find and provide work. When rings forecast that demand is outstripping particular types of supply, they will arrange training courses in the area to deliver the necessary skills. Such vocationally driven training is a key element to the development of skills and ring membership is a flexible multi-skilled workforce with a huge range of specialist machines.
The most common way in which a Ring funds its operation is by annual subscription and a standard commission of 2% on both supplier and demander invoices. The management systems use fairly sophisticated IT and communication with members.
5th Principle: Education, Training and Information
Co-operatives provide education and training for their members, elected representatives, managers, and employees so they can contribute effectively to the development of their co-operatives. They inform the general public - particularly young people and opinion leaders - about the nature and benefits of co-operation.
But cooperative education focuses almost entirely on value-added aspects or best practices for internal governance. I see a lot of amazing education performed by cooperatives. Food coops are reengaging people with traditional/folk/organic agricultural practices and food prep. Electric coops are pushing their members to save money through conservation. And credit unions are by far the leaders in teaching financial literacy (y'think big finance wants individuals to know how to pay down their debts as quickly as possible?).
Where is the social transformation component?
The intended purpose of the cooperative model is to create a viable challenge to the dominant neo-feudal, corporatist system (some call it capitalism) through an intentionally designed, market-based choice.
Where does our co-op educational system root itself? Why do we educate our members and our host communities about cooperatives? Is it just to promote our coops, have better jobs, and provide cheaper goods and services? Shouldn't we aim to demonstrate that the real power of the cooperative model is in its capacity to transform society, and give the least amongst us a real chance, a real choice to control their own lives?
Tom Webb, who is arguably a godfather of the modern Canadian cooperative movement, speaks about the co-operative business model in contrast to the investor owned business model under the title, "Is the Economy an Angry God?"
Tom has been studying and working with co-operatives and sitting on co-op and credit union boards for more than 30 years. He is an adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University, Sobey School of Business in Halifax where he contributed to the development of the Master of Management - Co-operatives and Credit Unions (MMCCU) program.
Imagine 2012 & International Summit of Co-operatives
Guest Post by Tom Webb
In 2007 most economists told us the global ‘economy’ was very healthy - the fundamentals were sound. That year 1.3 million children starved to death and 5.8 million more suffered from severe malnutrition. An economy that fails to provide food for more than 7 million children is not sound nor is the economics that claims it so.
Governments around the world were forced to spend trillions to bail out banks and companies too big to be allowed to fail. They had to be that big we were told so that they could be "economic." Governments bailed them out and the top managers kept their huge bonuses supposedly because they earned them. The old economics said you have to pay them that much to attract that level of skill. If this economics was not so sad it would be funny. We cannot build a better world with thinking like that.
To 'build a better world' one of the things we desperately need is a better understanding of the economy from a co-operative perspective. We need an alternative to the economics that brought us the Great Recession of 2008, to the economics that regards co-operatives as so inefficient in principle that there is no need to look at reality. We need an alternative to the neo-classical approach to economics that is not based on the idea of meeting human need as a priority. We need a positive economics of hope. We need to understand what our members will need as we head into a decade of uncertainty.
At Imagine 2012, this fall’s co-operative economics conference October 6th to 8th, co-operative leaders will have the opportunity to explore alternative economics and the ideas we need to create an economics of hope. At the 2012 International Summit of Co-operatives October 8th to 11th, co-operative leaders will use those economic tools and that analysis to begin to shape strategies to build a better world over the next decade.
Get engaged. Check out the following links for the Imagine 2012: Overview, Presenters, Schedule, and Sponsor/Partner Opportunities; and these for the Summit: Who is the Summit for?, Why Attend, and Registration Forms (English)
J. Tom Webb is the Imagine 2012 Conference Manager and an Adjunct Professor within the Master of Management – Co-operatives and Credit Unions program at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The International Labour Office (ILO) hailed the proclamation by the United Nations General Assembly of 2012 of the International Year of Cooperatives as an acknowledgement of the fundamental role of cooperatives in promoting the socio-economic development of hundreds of millions of people worldwide, especially in times of economic crisis.
I was recently introduced to the “producers of pure innovation.” La Citadelle co-operative claims this title as its slogan. Here’s why I see that the slogan is true.
There are many innovative aspects of La Citadelle. They include its 80 year history of product development (they have maple personal care products?!) and international trade positioning; a mandatory comprehensive training program that’s completed before producers become members; the 2009 move that undercut competition and increased its membership by offering all members assured premiums equal to the average premium competing processors offer to lure large members away; and a support member-care system with a low representative to member ratio and district solidarity.
The greatest innovation of La Citadelle is its culture of innovation. While it has embraced numerous clever but not necessarily innovative changes, its atmosphere encourages innovative thinking. It is as if the goal of innovation has fostered an overall ethic of systems improvement that has
Yielded at a minimum an adherence to the high standards;
Kept the co-operative changing for the better. The old adage is that an organization is either getting weaker or getting stronger. La Citadelle’s culture has assured that it is an organization that is only getting stronger; and
Increased the odds that innovative genius will strike. By encouraging reflection on improvement, the co-op benefits from a greater number of innovations that arise from the good ideas that are cultivated.
This is a great example of what co-operatives are capable of doing – who else but a co-operative that gives its staff, members, and other stakeholders a greater role than a means to a profit would be able develop such a organizational culture. Its not just La Citadelle but all co-operatives are the producers of pure innovation.
In my last blog post, I touched on a sample of the sheer breadth of the cooperative economy in central Illinois. The region has a growing coop grocery sector, a stable electric coop industry, robust agricultural support, and coops with multinational reach. So how did we get there?
Now, those of us in the grocery coop sector know there is a knee jerk reaction when the words "Farm Bureau" come up. And more often than not, the Farm Bureau gets grouped together with those legions in big ag that might be on the receiving end of a Michael Pollen screed. But that's only part of the story.
The Farm Bureau has done a lot to grow the cooperative movement in the United States. Take the Illinois chapter for starters. The Illinois Farm Bureau helped to start GrowMark, an ag supply cooperative that spans the USA and Canada, with annual revenue of over $6 billion.
The Farm Bureau has also been instrumental over the last century in organizing folks in the countryside to take care of themselves. When, during the Depression, the U.S. government offered folks the opportunity to take out low interest loans to electrify their homesteads throughout rural America, it was the Farm Bureau that mobilized the farmers to form electric cooperatives. There are a number of amazing stories of country dwellers who, working their Farm Bureau, scrounged together the startup equity to qualify for the loans. Back then they didn't have the capital needed to get fancy bucket trucks, and instead would put the poles and cable spools in the back of a pick up truck, and run electric lines themselves.
Talk about DIY!
If it wasn't for the sweat equity of rural dwellers and the mobilization of the Farm Bureaus, we wouldn't have built that initial foundation that would eventually become a highly advanced electric cooperative sector.
This isn't to defend everything the various Farm Bureaus do. However, it is to say that institutions like the Farm Bureau have immense capacity to not only build real local economics, but make us more self-relient. When it comes to local community development, sometimes when you're left with just you're bootstraps, you might find those constraints will make you more entrepreneurial. And that entrepreneurship might lead to big things.
