Weld coops give answers to Russian farmers

Russian farmers have decades of experience working on state farms for the common good. But as the collective farms are dismantled, farmers are looking for agribusiness concepts applicable in a rapidly developing economy.
Weld County’s cooperatives have answers.
For two weeks in November, a delegation of 20 Russian farmers toured Weld County farms and cooperatives during an agribusiness training program at Colorado State University’s International Center for Agriculture and Resource Development.
During visits to supply, marketing and information organizations, managers explained the organization and marketing methods that allow small growers to effectively compete with large corporate interests.
Colorado has about 50 marketing and supply cooperatives that do approximately $800 million in business each year and serve about 33,000 member. In Larimer and Weld counties, there are 17 cooperatives.
The idea, William Spencer said, was to help nurture American entrepreneurial concepts among the Russian farmers, while simultaneously encouraging the group to bend the ideas to work within the vagaries of their home economy. Spencer heads ICARD.
“We tried to prepare them by saying take our ideas, but don’t duplicate our ideas,” Spencer said. “Try them out at home, but don’t try to use a contract word for word the way we do.”
Agricultural economist Warren Trock, who as professor emeritus works with a small group of Russian agricultural economists studying at ICARD, said it seems likely that cooperative concepts will be applied as often in production, as in marketing and supply.
“With the breakup of the state farms, the individuals interested in continuing to farm don’t have the experience of individual farm management,´ said Trock said.
“When you think about the experience they’ve had for decades, it may be much more difficult to go to an individual farming operation than to the cooperative, which looks a little more like their background and experience.”
The Russian Parliament has approved legislation that authorizes cooperatives to organize, through President Boris Yeltsin has yet to sign the bill.
While American cooperatives are usually composed of individual farms, Trock said he expects the Russian version will involve a general manager overseeing the business side of several farms and a division of labor.
Though the concept of cooperative is relatively simple ­ a group of growers gets together to market larger quantities of produce for better prices ­ some of the Russians had trouble with niggling little questions, such as what happens if the truck doesn’t show up at Rocky Mountain Pork Association.
“The truck always shows up,” explained Brian Barry, general manager of the hog marketing cooperative southwest of Ault. “And if it doesn’t show up, we call another truck.”
Under the collective system, armers were at the mercy of dispatchers. “They would call for transportation to be there, and it may or may not come,” Spencer explained. “And because it was a government truck, they didn’t have a lot of recourse. So now, it’s kind of a foreign concept that they’re in control and if it doesn’t work right, they need to fix it.”