The nonpartisan leader., 1919-09-08
Farmer Cooperation in British Isles

ana OOuCn OF
rs Interests
vicinity have been studied and society organized
especially to meet these needs.
One common form of the cooperative society is
the cooperative creamery. Ireland was the
greatest butter-producing country in the world.
Then it's place was taken by Denmark, and to a
lesser extent by Sweden, France and Canada. Irish
butter was always good butter, but the middleman,
buying first from one farmer and then from
another found that he could not get Irish butter
of the uniform quality which the English market
demanded. Ireland took hint from Denmark in
the organization of cooperative creameries and is
winning back her natural trade.
HOW COOPERATIVE DIARIES
ARE FORMED IN IRELAND
In localities where dairying is the chief form of
farming the farmers subscriba-for shares of Stock
generally taking share worth about SIS for each
COW in their barns. With this money and with addi-
ticnal funds borrowed from bank on the joint Sc
curity, the farmers establish their creamery
Since many farmers cooperate, it is possible to
purchase the best machinery and to adopt the
cheapest methods.
The creamery buys the milk from the farmers
at the highest possible price, paying according
to weight and butter content. The creamery re-
turns the separated milk and the buttermilk to
the farmer, and sells the butter now of uniform
Profits, of course, go not to middleman but to
the farmers themselves. Today there are 400
cooperative ,creameries operating in Ireland
with total membership of $4,000 farmers, and
they market each year butter, cheese and milk
worth more than $2O,OOO,OOO.
In addition to the 400 creameries, there are 261
agricultural societies, with total membership of
$4,000. These societies buy farm machinery and
rent it to their members at the lowest prices;
reapers and binders, potato diggers, sprayers,
manure spreaders, milking machines shearing ma
chimes, and other implements which are needed to
make farming profitable, but which the individual
farmer, cultlvatng only few acres, could not af-
ford to buy for his own exclusive use These So
cetles also buy seed and fertilizer and other neces-
sites and sell them at cost to their MEMBERS thus
giving the farmer the benefit of wholesale prices
and guaranteeing him good products. In the days
before the farmers discovered the benefits of CO.
operation they paid high prices for seed that often
proved of low standard
Then there are I'll credit societies, which lend
money to the farmer at rates lower than those
adopted by banks; IL poultry societies, which pur-
chase, pack and sell eggs and poultry and return
the profits to their members 16 flax societies. which
mill and market flax and tow, and host of other
societies too numerous to mention, interested in
milling, curing bacon and a hundred other enter
~prises.
Thus Ireland has shown, through the Irish Agri-
cultural Organization society and the cooperative
societies that it has fostered that it can unite
Cathollcs and Protestants, Sim Fein and Ulster
II has shown that farming, Improbable when each
FARMER buys at the mercy of trader and sells at
the mercy of middleman, may be profitable when
farmers cooperate and buy and sell for themselves
Although the cooperative movement has done
much to free the British workers and farmers from
the prohteers, the former, at least have found that
cooperation alone can not solve all their problems
They have long realized that unless they elected
men to parliament who would represent them as