The Farmer and His Community

by Dwight Sanderson

Not only must there be sufficient volume of a given product, but it must be so standardized with regard to varieties, grade and quantities or packages that the reputation of the goods may be established in the market. In order to secure uniformity it has been found necessary to standardize varieties and to grow a few well-known varieties of a given product which are best adapted to local conditions and to the market, rather than a number of varieties, as might be feasible if they were all sold directly on the local market.

Uniformity of grading and packing is also essential to establish a reputation on the market. A concern like the California Fruit Growers' Exchange cannot afford to spend half a million dollars a year in advertising unless it knows that its product will be as advertised, for advertising an unreliable product may secure temporary sales, but will hardly be a profitable investment, for the value of advertising an honest product is cumulative. To secure necessary uniformity of grading and packing it has been found necessary with almost all agricultural products to have the grading and packing done at a central establishment rather than on the farm. For even assuming the honesty and good intent of the farmer, the standards and skill of different farmers will vary to such an extent that uniformity is impossible. Uniformity of grade and package must be secured at some stage of the process of marketing before the goods are bought by the retailer. Until recently much of this service has been performed by the commission men at the central markets, who have taken what was shipped to them or what their agents purchased and graded it to meet the demands of the trade, and who, of course, had to charge for their services. It has been found more profitable with most products to have the grading and packing done as near to the farm as is possible to secure a sufficient volume of business for the enterprise. Thus we have local packing houses for fruits, potatoes, poultry products, grain elevators, etc., usually located at the point of primary shipment. These local plants, as well as local creameries, canneries, and other agricultural factories and storage plants, become community institutions as they meet the needs of the farmers within the areas tributary to the centers where they are located. It is true, of course, that many of these plants are located in the open country or at mere railroad stations, and that many of them draw their patronage from several communities; yet more commonly than otherwise they are located at village centers and serve the areas tributary to them. With the advent of good roads and motor trucks, the areas served by such establishments will tend to become larger, but there are many local circumstances which will tend to limit the process of centralization. Whether these plants are operated by private individuals, by stock companies, or by coöperative associations of the producers, they are essential to an effective marketing system and may greatly strengthen community life. If, however, there be two or three elevators in a little village, each operated for profit by a private owner, where all the business could be more economically handled by one concern and where the competition creates friction and suspicion, then like the rivalry between an excessive number of churches, they tend to divide the community.

Students of marketing problems seem agreed that better marketing systems will benefit the farmer through greater efficiency which will reduce the costs of the process rather than through greater profits from higher prices, and that in many lines the largest improvement is possible in the grading, packing, and shipping from the local station. This being the case, it seems obvious that the solution of the marketing problem will increasingly depend upon community action.

Better transportation and storage facilities tend to stabilize prices over large areas and to give the larger markets increasing advantage in bargaining for the farmer's products. Not that there is any concerted action upon the part of the buyers to take an undue advantage of the farmer, for there is usually keen competition between them, but inevitably the "centralization" of the buying power of the larger markets makes it possible for them to very largely determine the price, just as the large employers of labor can to a considerable extent determine the wages they will pay if labor is unorganized; for whenever there is a surplus the individual farmer must sell, while the buyer can, within limits, purchase where or from whom he chooses. Thus for the same reason that labor is forced to organize trade unions to maintain its wages and working conditions, farmers are forced to organize to market their products together and to bargain collectively for their price. This is the outstanding agricultural movement of the past decade and at the present time is so successfully challenging the established system of marketing as to command national attention. The success of such a movement depends primarily upon the solidarity and efficiency of the local units, so that collective bargaining requires the organization of the agricultural community into selling associations for its various products. The whole process encourages the economic organization of the rural community and heightens community consciousness through the effort of its members to defend their common economic interests.

The method of collective selling may vary, but in practice the coöperative selling association has proven the most satisfactory and will be discussed in the following chapter.

When the most successful farmers on the best land in Illinois lose twenty-five cents on every bushel of corn they raised, as was the case in 1921, and when it is easier for isolated farmers in Kansas to burn corn than to buy coal at the prices current, while at the same time millions of innocent women and children are starving in Europe, it seems evident that the complex system of marketing upon which modern industry and civilization has depended, is pretty well out of gear and that national and international questions must be wisely solved before it can again function. Yet in last analysis the solution of the complex problems of marketing rests not alone with international treaties, but with the farmers' selling associations of the rural communities. If we are to have a marketing system which is truly functional, which is built on the principle of the greatest service at the lowest cost, rather than on the principle now implicit in business of sufficient service to secure the maximum of profit which the traffic will bear, then it must be a coöperative system, the primary unit of which is the local coöperative association, whose success depends upon the loyalty of its members to the coöperative principle. So coöperation is a community problem.

Nor can we expect marked progress in other phases of rural life as long as the economic question is acute. It is not true that economic prosperity in agriculture will of itself ensure the higher culture of the countryside; but it is true that so long as the farmer is compelled to devote all of his strength and time to making a competence for his family, that his attention must necessarily be fixed on economic ends and that he will have neither the means nor the time for those satisfactions of life which are possible to one with some leisure. Says "A.E.": "I believe the fading hold the heavens have over the world is due to the neglect of the economic basis of spiritual life. What profound spiritual life can there be when the social order almost forces men to battle with each other for the means of existence?"[29] For weal or woe the material existence of both farmer and townman throughout the civilized world is inextricably inter-dependent. If a better economic system is to arise it must come through the general understanding of these relations by the education of all parties and by a willingness to find satisfaction in the well-being of all rather than in the largest individual profit. Unless these attitudes can be established in the local community, how can we expect to secure harmony of interests among larger groups? Loyalty to the common good must first be developed in the local community among neighbors.

In subsequent chapters we shall have occasion to consider various forces and methods for creating this spirit of community, and we shall see that whereas the higher culture of rural life awaits a better economic system, this spirit of loyalty which is essential for coöperative organizations may be developed through various forms of community activity.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] See Percy Wells Bidwell, "Rural Economy in New England at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century." Trans. Comm. Acad. Arts and Sci., Vol. 20, p. 253, 1916; and E. G. Nourse, "Agricultural Economics," p. 65.