The Economic Culture of U.S. Agricultural Cooperatives

摘要: Two contesting philosophies that shaped cooperative culture during the past 70 years are explored, Edwin Nourse’s populist concept of cooperatives as a “competitive yardstick” restoring competition to marketplace on behalf farmers and Aaron Sapiro’s philosophy should be businesslike, purely economic preferably large-scale organizations for maximum effectiveness bargaining with processors. As expanded over 20th century, tension between these two set into motion cultural constraints growth came crisis point industrialization pork industry. This brought rapprochement businesses had formerly defined themselves in opposition to, resulting new phase identity, “valueadded” cooperative. [Keywords: cooperatives, agriculture, farmers, competitive yardstick, value-added, Nourse, Sapiro]