Rural co-ops no longer just for farms and electricity

Electric co-operatives and farming co-ops have long been staples of rural America, but now the co-operative model is now catching on in new industries. The model has "evolved into hybrids that combine two or more business interests, and it’s expanding into new and unlikely service sectors," Nancy Jorgensen reports for the Daily Yonder reports. One such area is buying co-operatives between farmers and local institutions like hospitals, schools or governments. Puget Sound residents also can turn to the co-op model for funeral arrangements.

Stephen Ronstrom, CEO of Sacred Heart Hospital in Eau Claire, Wisc., was recognized by the state of Wisconsin and the Wall Street Journal for buying local farm products for hospital meals. "Local food is good medicine for everyone," Ronstrom wrote in a 2008 newspaper editorial that got the ball rolling. "It preserves and expands family farms, provides jobs in production and processing, and keeps money in our community." Sacred Heart committed to spending 10 percent of its $2 million annual food budget on local food and in 2009 it joined with local farmers to form the Producers & Buyers Co-op.

"Institutional food buyers maintain long-standing relationships with suppliers, making it difficult for other producers to break into the market," Jorgensen writes. Buyers can also face limited product availability. "The co-op removes these barriers," Rick Beckler, Sacred Heart's director of hospitality services, told Jorgensen, "because the organization is itself a mid-tier value-added food chain made up of producers, processors, transporters, and institutional buyers." Two other hospitals have joined the co-op and the group is working to attract more buyers, including schools, universities, nursing homes and cafeterias. (Read more)