Cooperatives

Cooperatives are businesses owned and run jointly by their members, with profits or benefits shared among them. Farmers have built them for marketing produce, buying supplies, and securing credit — farm marketing associations rank as the most important type, with purchasing cooperatives second. By pooling volume, small producers gain bargaining power, shared infrastructure, and services none could afford alone. Dairy cooperatives are the giants of the model, collecting milk daily from thousands of farms and returning the value of processing to the producers themselves.