By Chowning Johnson
and Dan
Rahn
University of Georgia

A growing interest in farm co-ops got a boost last month from a
$266,000 federal grant to the Georgia Center for Agribusiness and
Economic Development. The grant will give Georgia its first
statewide farm co-op development center.

The new Georgia Cooperative Development Center will be one of 20
such centers in the United States.

The GCDC will support fledgling co-ops and help farmers who want
to form others, said CAED coordinator John McKissick. Before the
grant, he said, there weren’t enough resources to meet all of the
needs.

The CAED, part of the University of Georgia College of
Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, secured the grant from
the Rural Development program.

“The grant will focus on cooperative development and providing
more services to those in agriculture who think they have a
future to develop as a co-op,” McKissick said.

Expansion

It will fund two business development specialists and other
resources. “It will enable us to do a lot more of what we’ve been
doing,” he said.

The CAED has played a key role in successful co-ops like the
Sunbelt Goat Producers in Washington County and Farm Fresh
Tattnall, a co-op of roadside markets and pick-your-own farms in
Tattnall County.

Co-ops, McKissick said, are a way for business people to work
together and do what they couldn’t do separately.

The new center’s steering committee has already approved new
feasibility studies, board training, market analyses, business
plans or other support for four co-ops:

• An ethanol production co-op among Georgia corn growers.




• The Sunbelt Organic Gold co-op of south Georgia poultry
  growers who want to make and market organic fertilizer from
  chicken litter.




• A Community Food Network that would match organic produce
  growers with markets in suburban Atlanta.




• A co-op that would match organic-minded markets with
  grass-finished beef.

Success rates

“The center will improve new co-ops’ success rates by making sure
they have a good foundation from the start and giving them the
necessary supplies to update business plans as needed,” said Bill
Thomas, a GCDC co-op development specialist.

A market analysis for a newly formed Southwest Georgia
agritourism co-op, for instance, showed that television
advertising would reach its best audience. Without the study,
Thomas said, they might have made some key marketing mistakes.

The 11 Resource, Conservation and Development Councils of the
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service are partners of the
new GCDC.

(Chowning Johnson is a student writer and Dan Rahn a news
editor with the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and
Environmental Sciences.)