Co-op Hall of Fame Tribute:  Honoring Mike Toelle's Cooperative Legacy

So we've been on air for 13 years, and I've created that there are four types of co-ops.

The two that farmers use a lot I call a marketing co-op that takes whatever comes out of the farm and puts it into more markets.

Your grain co-op would be that type of a co-op.

Right.

And the other type is a purchasing co-op, at least that's the term I have given them, and those are the ones that the farmer can go buy whatever they need.

You call them inputs.

Buy whatever inputs they need to produce whatever they're gonna produce.

And by having this business for a number of farmers, they normally can buy... know what better quality is 'cause they can study the different vendors and the products, and because they're buying in larger volume, they can normally get it at a better price than each individual farmer can.

So this is the, the cooperation, the benefits of the marketing co-ops are the farmer knows, in this case, the grain is gonna be purchased by this company, and they're gonna market it throughout the world in your case, [chuckles] okay, not just the US, but they're gonna market it throughout the world and therefore ought to get a better price than you, Mike Thole, can get as a Minnesota farmer.

Okay.

So those are two main benefits of cooperation and two major types of co-ops.

And right now, um, artists are beginning to use both of those.

There's a group of artists, Black women in Pittsburgh that have come together.

They, they make jewelry.

They do paintings.

They, they sew clothes and buy-sew from other- Artists, and then they've opened up a storefront in Pittsburgh.

So they can market their goods and come together.

Each individual artist probably could not afford a storefront and a, and a online presence, but together they can, and they can get their products sold.

So they also are doing some purchasing co-op kinds of things, buying things together.

So yeah, this co-op can work for a lot of different places.

Ag is what we're talking about now, but we can go to artists, we can go to almost anything.

Matter of fact, I have a T-shirt says, "There's a co-op for that." [laughs] I, I, I think the folks up in Washington State created that, uh, that, that particular saying.

So-

The co-op model, Vern, uh, Vernon is a, is really a strong, as you, as you pointed out in the great example you gave, and that's, it can be used across so many different businesses, so many different business sectors, um, and it creates a very, um, aligned group of members, right? I mean, you, you can use it to buy your, your needed inputs for a business if that's what you're doing and, and market together on the output side when none of us individually could do that on our own.

Um, it's just a very powerful way to approach it, especially in my situation in, in the commodity world, which is large scale and, you know, high volume and need global markets.

So we've been on air for 13 years, and I've created that there are four types of co-ops.

The two that farmers use a lot I call a marketing co-op that takes whatever comes out of the farm and puts it into more markets.

Your grain co-op would be that type of a co-op.

Right.

And the other type is a purchasing co-op, at least that's the term I have given them, and those are the ones that the farmer can go buy whatever they need.

You call them inputs.

Buy whatever inputs they need to produce whatever they're gonna produce.

And by having this business for a number of farmers, they normally can buy... know what better quality is 'cause they can study the different vendors and the products, and because they're buying in larger volume, they can normally get it at a better price than each individual farmer can.

So this is the, the cooperation, the benefits of the marketing co-ops are the farmer knows, in this case, the grain is gonna be purchased by this company, and they're gonna market it throughout the world in your case, [chuckles] okay, not just the US, but they're gonna market it throughout the world and therefore ought to get a better price than you, Mike Thole, can get as a Minnesota farmer.

Okay.

So those are two main benefits of cooperation and two major types of co-ops.

And right now, um, artists are beginning to use both of those.

There's a group of artists, Black women in Pittsburgh that have come together.

They, they make jewelry.

They do paintings.

They, they sew clothes and buy-sew from other- Artists, and then they've opened up a storefront in Pittsburgh.

So they can market their goods and come together.

Each individual artist probably could not afford a storefront and a, and a online presence, but together they can, and they can get their products sold.

So they also are doing some purchasing co-op kinds of things, buying things together.

So yeah, this co-op can work for a lot of different places.

Ag is what we're talking about now, but we can go to artists, we can go to almost anything.

Matter of fact, I have a T-shirt says, "There's a co-op for that." [laughs] I, I, I think the folks up in Washington State created that, uh, that, that particular saying.

So-

The co-op model, Vern, uh, Vernon is a, is really a strong, as you, as you pointed out in the great example you gave, and that's, it can be used across so many different businesses, so many different business sectors, um, and it creates a very, um, aligned group of members, right? I mean, you, you can use it to buy your, your needed inputs for a business if that's what you're doing and, and market together on the output side when none of us individually could do that on our own.

Um, it's just a very powerful way to approach it, especially in my situation in, in the commodity world, which is large scale and, you know, high volume and need global markets.