Technicians provide electrical service to a neighborhood. They work for Volunteer Energy Cooperative just east of Chattanooga. A co-op model used by VEC could be ideal for creating an internal market for capital in Chattanooga, with profits paid in terms of rebates, discounts or refunds.
Chattanooga could create investment co-op along lines of Volunteer Energy Cooperative
The lococentric theory of prosperity for my hometown and yours seeks to enable local investors to put money into local businesses. As we learned from Michael Shuman in his book, Local Dollars, Local Sense, Uncle’s laws prevent local investment, and years of propaganda by the financial industry make people not see local possibilities for capitalization and profit. If Chattanooga is to withstand the coming buffetings in the national economy ignited by the U.S. government, its smart residents might be wise to establish a cooperative where local business owners obtain capital from investors. We need an internal marketplace for money to bypass Wall Street and Washington.
Possibly the best vehicle for this development — which could be online — would be a co-op.
Here, the communications coordinator of a local distributor of electricity explains the co-op concept. Robert McCarty works for Volunteer Energy Cooperative, whose service area stretches from the Georgia to the Kentucky borders of Tennessee. If you have been following the Nooganomics line of thinking, much of what Mr. McCarty says will seem familiar — and very doable for local economy and local investment. — DJT
By Robert McCarty
During America’s frontier days, friends and neighbors came from miles around to enjoy the fellowship of others while they helped a family “raise” a barn or build a house. There were also afternoons when ladies gathered in the parlor at quilting bees, each sewing a patch to contribute to the project. Although these were not formal cooperative associations by any means, they were some of our nation’s first cooperative efforts.
What is a cooperative? A cooperative is a business which is financed, owned and controlled by the people who use it. Cooperatives are made up of individuals who have similar interests, desires and problems. By working together, they combine their investments and influence. This gives them financial strength, greater independence, and a stronger voice in their own business affairs.
Today’s cooperatives — whether in agriculture, utilities, banking, retailing, insurance or wholesaling — are organizations in which people of similar needs and interests work together to help themselves and each other. By doing so, they strengthen themselves economically. They keep profits within their own control. And they stimulate free enterprise while helping to protect the family farm.
From credit to marketing milk
Today, the life of every American is touched in some way by cooperative enterprises. Approximately 45,000 separate cooperative organizations, with more than 90 million members, currently operate in this country.
Statistics show that, of the 45,000 cooperatives, approximately 5,000 are farmer-owned, providing marketing, purchasing, and related services for farmers and producers. Cooperatives market about 25 percent of all agricultural products and provide about 25 percent of all production supplies used on farms each year.
But the statistics tell only part of the story.
Cooperatives are particularly important to rural Americans. Some 30 percent of all irrigated farmland is supplied water by mutual irrigation associations. Fire and insurance coverage on farm buildings in the United States is carried by more than 1,000 farmers’ mutual fire insurance associations.
Sheep and cattle producers — working through 1,200 grazing associations — use certain public lands for grazing livestock. Dairy farmers have organized about 1,100 dairy herd improvement associations. Forty million rural people get their electric power from more than 900 electric cooperatives and their telephone service from about 250 cooperatives.
Sound credit is extended to agricultural cooperatives and to farmers to help finance land, crops, livestock, and equipment, through the cooperative banks comprising the farm credit system. In addition, about 1,000 rural credit unions chartered under federal and state statutes provide savings and loan services to many thousands of their members.
In fact, if you ate a Sunkist orange for breakfast, began your day with a glass of Welch’s grape juice, enjoyed a box of Sunmaid raisins at lunch, or spread Land O’ Lakes butter on your bread, you consumed foods and beverages produced and marketed by large cooperatives.
From Bristol to Memphis
Tennessee cooperatives are no different. Within the state there are many farm supply, marketing, service and credit cooperatives. General farm supplies are available through Tennessee Farmers Cooperative and its 73 member co-ops located across Tennessee. Various types of marketing cooperatives provide marketplaces for fruits and vegetables, milk, grain and tobacco.
Services in the form of electricity, telephones and artificial insemination are also provided by cooperatives. Credit is available to the farmer through the Bank for Cooperatives and Farm Bureau.
Truly, cooperatives touch our lives daily.
Cooperation, mutual benefit main theories
Co-ops such as VEC usually are connected to a particular place (or groupings of locales). The co-op provides electricity from the top of Tennessee to the bottom. (Source: VEC)
To better understand how cooperatives are organized and why they exist requires a look at some of the cooperative principles of conducting business.
Cooperatives as we know them today are relatively new. Yet cooperative ventures have existed throughout the world for centuries.
In early times, it didn’t take people long to discover that some jobs are pretty hard for one person to tackle alone. Working together can be for the mutual benefit of everyone.
The first agricultural cooperative was established in Babylon almost 2,000 years before the birth of Christ. Its objective was similar to the goals of modern agricultural cooperatives — that is, to provide greater flexibility and more independence for member farmers.
The forerunner of our modern cooperatives — the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers — was founded in England in 1844. It started with 28 members, and each member purchased one share of stock worth about $150 in today’s economy.
Membership consisted of craftsmen such as weavers and shoemakers. Working together they were able to sell their products under one roof and use a part of the earnings to purchase supplies in large quantities at economical prices. Another portion of the earnings was reinvested in the Society so that it could continue to grow. The remainder of the funds was returned to the individual members in the form of refunds.
Democratic control, owned by members
It wasn’t until the Civil War and the coming of the Industrial Revolution that American agricultural cooperatives really took root. In the 1920’s, the federal government and various state governments began to step in with laws designed to encourage the growth of agricultural cooperatives. Perhaps the most important law was the Capper-Volstead Act of 1922. It allowed farmers to organize legally to buy and sell their products and is a law under which cooperatives operate today.
How is a cooperative different from other business?
➤ First, cooperative memberships are voluntary.
➤ Second, a cooperative has “democratic control.” A cooperative is a true democracy since — in almost all cases — each member has one vote. This allows the members to have final authority in controlling the affairs of the business.
Profit, or ‘excess money,’ returned as refund
➤ Another principle of cooperatives is that they operate at cost to the benefit of their members. Cooperatives exist to meet the needs of their members for products and services and to meet these needs as economically as possible. They are not in business to make money for investors, as other types of businesses must do.
A co-op generally does not keep the excess money it makes. Usually a cooperative’s excess money — known in business as “profit” — is returned to its members in one form or another. It can be returned through what is called a “patronage refund” or it can be returned through lower rates and fees. A portion of the earnings, however, is often retained in a fund which is reserved for the purchase of new equipment, the construction of new buildings, and acquisition of new property.
Co-ops tomorrow
Cooperative will become even more important as American agriculture faces new challenges in the years ahead. To be a successful farmer in today’s economic and political environment takes advanced knowledge, large amounts of capital, polished managerial skills and cooperation with others. These factors are more important to farmers today than ever before.
America has progressed over the years from a predominantly agricultural country to an industrial nation and now to an information-based society. As a result, farmers have become fewer in number. Through membership and participation in their cooperative associations, however, they have found new markets for their products and services, and they have developed a stronger voice in the affairs of agriculture.
Co-op long used to sell electricity
A Volunteer Energy worker tends to his duties atop a pole.
Like other types of cooperatives, electric co-ops exist to serve members in providing a service that would otherwise be unavailable to them.
Electric co-ops began to light the countryside in 1935 with the creation of the Rural Electrification Administration by President Franklin Roosevelt’s executive order. Co-ops were needed because it was not economically feasible for existing power companies to build lines in the sparsely populated corners of rural America.
REA has recently been changed to the Rural Utility Service. The program still provides loans for rural electrification; moreover, the new RUS now gives co-ops the opportunity to help further develop rural communities by obtaining loans for water and sewer development, and also secures loans for businesses to improve job opportunities in rural areas.
22 electric co-ops in Tennessee
Today, there are 22 electric co-ops in Tennessee serving 1.5 million people in about 600,000 homes, farms, industries, and institutions. During the last half-century of operation, Tennessee’s electric cooperatives have taken electricity to rural and small town residents across more than three-quarters of the state’s land area, providing better standards of living for the people of Tennessee.
