The Bismarck tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, N.D.) 1916-current, 1925-10-15
Editorial Comment
Make Orderly Marketing a Habit
minneapolis Journa

minneapolis JOurnal)
Discussing the failure of the Grain Marketing
Corporation, the Saturday Evening Post observes
that the corporation really got started owing
to the refusal Of farmers to buy the stock, adding
that is difficult to interest farmers in cooperative
enterprises when crop prices are HIGH while it is
somewhat futile to interest them when crop prices
are low, for then they have no money to invest.
We not sure about this reasoning. We
have farmers pour great sums into packing
house projects, foredoomed to failure, at the peak
of boom period, and we have farmers sink
money in other cooperative ventures when agrcul-
ture foundering in the slough Of despond. 1t
is largely matter of craftsmanship.
But if cooperative ventures recently have demon
strated anything, it is that general rule, CO.
operation is not going to put the middlemans profit
into the growers pocket. Whether the crop is
marketed through existing agencies, or through
newly devised cooperative machinery the cost of
getting it distributed and sold is about the same
The cooperative's operating expenses take the toll
that otherwise would go to the middleman.
Elimination of the middleman's profit, however,
has not been the only end sought through CO.
operative wheat selling. The other important
benefit aimed at is orderly marketing rketing
that will not dump the whole crop into the pit at
once, and thus smash prices at the very time when
! the producer is disposng of his harvest.
! But this be accomplished without any stock
buying, without any investment in elevators and
warehouses. without the employment of any selling
agents, even without any organization agreement
Let the wheat farmers form the habit of spreading
their crop selling evenly over the seven or eight
, months following harvest, selling little each
month, and they will not the market smashed
under the weight Of their sales every autumn.
This remedy is nothing new. The farmer ha:
known about it for years. The wheat pools have
fact remains that such orderly marketing has neve
been done a comprehensive scale. But 1t prob
ably will not be done through any elaborate organ
ization, with dues, pledges bookkeeping and To-
of hired help. Orderly marketing spreading o
grain sales through the fall, winter and spring, vii
have to custom, generally and voluntaril!
followed, rather than the result OF an agreemen
unwilingly kept.
The farmer objects that his bills and notes arr
all payable in the fall that he has to dump his cro
as harvested in order to meet these obi
cations, and that this naturally prevents formation
of orderly marketing habits. Well, the farmer Cal
change all that. Following two consecutive goo
farm years. he has cleaned up most of his old debt
and has some liquid capital. There is magic il
liquid capital BY financing, in whole in part
his operations, instead Of sinking cash profit
. in more land to compete with the land he alread
has under cultivation, the farmer can just abou
specify when his obligations to fall due. II
can set them from fall to spring He car
with his cash. shake off financial habits tina
hitherto have squeezed his crop into overloade
market at the wrong time.