[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 23881-23882]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                        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

[[Page 23882]]

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.

                              {time}  1945

  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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