One of the reasons for this is that the farm loan programs of Farmers Home Administration were transferred to the Farm Service Agency during the Departmental reorganization. This has meant that the Cooperative Services unit is the only group in the entire Rural Development mission area with a primary orientation to agriculture. The housing and rural utilities agency personnel largely felt that they had no more program responsibility for production agriculture after this transfer occurred. There were 3.3 million memberships in these cooperatives indicating that many farmers belong to more than one cooperative. So everyone is on the same page, we define a cooperative as a user-owned and democratically controlled business in which benefits are received in proportion to use of the organization's services.
Cooperatives have a strong legal foundation for group action.
In addition to State laws under which cooperatives are usually incorporated, there are Federal laws such as the Capper-Volstead Act of 1922, the Cooperative Marketing Act of 1926, the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929, the Farm Credit Act of 1934, the Rural Electrification Act of 1934, the Agricultural Marketing Agreements Act of 1937, and the Agricultural Fair Practices Act of 1967. Farmers historically belong to two basic types of organizations. Professional farmers' associations, both general farm and commodity specific, represent members as an occupational group. They offer producers a forum for influence and protest, including what are minimally acceptable farm gate prices for their products. They also have a history of involvement in product promotional activities, and encourage the development of cooperatively-owned businesses.