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dition. Among these are frozen food locker plants, transportation, mutual insurance, irrigation, telephone, electricity, soil conservation, dairy herd improvement, and many others.

INCE the establishment of the early cooperative frozen food locker plants in the 1920's in the Pacific Northwest, the locker industry has gone through what appear to be three rather well-defined periods of development.

The first period, extending into the early 1940's, was primarily one of locker storage with a limited amount of fresh meat processing, most of the food being prepared in the homes before it was placed in locker storage.

The second period, from 1945 to 1948, saw a rapid growth in locker storage facilities. Such processing services as slaughtering, curing, smoking, lard rendering, sausage manufacturing, and poultry dressing were expanded.

The third period, which began about 1949, saw a definite slowdown in the construction of new storage plants. At the same time there was a broadening of processing and merchandising activities. This was brought about by the need for servicing the rapidly increasing number of home-freezer owners, as well as a limited number of restaurants, hospitals, and other local institutions.

Numbers Decline

As was to be expected in such a rapidly expanding new industry, too many

plants, both cooperative and others, were built. Many of them were poorly located, inadequately financed, and incapably managed. As a result, the total number of locker plants declined from a peak of about 11,600 in 1951 to 10,553 at the end of 1954-a decrease of about 9 percent. Cooperative plants experienced a drop from 850 in 1948 to about 700 in 1954.

Over two-thirds of the cooperative locker plants are located in the Midwest with largest numbers in Minnesota and Illinois. About half the cooperative plants are affiliated with other business enterprises such as milk plants, farm supply cooperatives, and other miscellaneous business enterprises.

Services Increase

Modern locker plants, whether cooperatively or privately owned, perform a wide variety of services. The greatly expanded use of home freezers has provided the locker industry with a much broader base of patrons and customers. In order to attract this new type of business, plants are placing more emphasis on advertising and merchandising.

In addition to supplying custom processing and storage services, the

modern locker plant acts as a market mechanism for the sale of locally produced meats, poultry, fruits, and vegetables. These are offered in wholesale quantities at less than retail prices. Many plants also sell commercial frozen fruits, vegetables, and seafood produced outside the area. In other words, these plants are becoming community processing, freezing, storing, and merchandising centers.

In 1955 consumers controlled and used about 120 million cubic feet of zero storage space in home freezers or in locker plants. This space was capable of holding at one time over 3.5 billion pounds of perishable food. Such a development is changing buying and eating habits and exerting an important influence upon the marketing system. It enables the consumer to buy in quantity lots during periods of heavy supply and thus helps to stabilize market prices. Likewise, local processing and distribution of locally grown foods reduce transportation and distribution costs. This, in turn, narrows the spread between producers and consumers. Locker plants are admirably suited to perform such services.

While, in general, cooperatives have been slow to take advantage of these new opportunities, a number of them have made significant progress in both processing and merchandising fields. For example, a locker plant at Marion,

Modern co-op locker plants are becoming centers for processing, freezing, storing, and merchandising meats, poultry, fruits, and vegetables. A good example is the Macoupin Locker Service, Carlinville, III.

Ill., has developed into a small meat packing plant. In 1954, this plant processed and merchandised nearly half a million dollars worth of locally produced meat products. In addition to serving nearly 1,000 locker customers, this plant produces and sells several kinds of commercial type sausage, cured pork products, and fresh meats to retail stores, restaurants, institutions, and other locker plants within a radius of 50 to 60 miles from the plant.

Another cooperative plant, at Jacksonville, Ill., in addition to custom processing for more than 900 locker patrons, operates a retail meat counter in conjunction with the locker plant. This plant also sells meat and commercial frozen food in wholesale quantities to restaurants, schools, colleges, and hospitals, as well as to several hundred home freezer users. Nearly all meat sold is purchased in the form of live animals raised and fed by local farmers.

A cooperative plant at Culpeper, Va., dresses and eviscerates thousands of head of poultry for local farmers and hucksters who sell to consumers in the Washington metropolitan area.

A cooperative plant at Asheville, N. C., operated by the Farmers Federation Cooperative processes and sells several thousand country-cured hams each year to local townspeople and

tourists.

The Central Carolina Farmers Exchange of Durham, N. C., furnishes an excellent illustration of a "multipurpose type" operation. This cooperative, in addition to its major farm supply business, operates a poultry dressing and freezing plant, a frozen food locker plant, an egg marketing service, a livestock auction, and a local slaughter plant. The locker plant, with its cooling, processing, freezing, and storage services performs an important link in this system of marketing locally produced products.

A number of Illinois cooperatives purchase tons of Michigan cherries,

Oregon strawberries, and Wisconsin blueberries and cranberries each year and sell them to locker and homefreezer patrons.

A group of these Illinois cooperatives also follow the practice of pooling orders with other locker plants and by so doing are able to purchase commercial frozen food in truck and carload lots at substantial savings in cost. These same cooperative plants are also promoting sale of "King-Sized" or institutional-sized packages in quantity lots at substantial reductions under retail store prices.

A few cooperative plants are buying, grading, and merchandising eggs. They also buy, dress, freeze, and sell poultry.

Local multipurpose type marketing, processing, and merchandising centers offer an improved means of reducing costs of distribution. They narrow the price spread between producer and consumer, improve quality of locally produced food, upgrade diets, increase consumption of high-energy foods, reduce wastes and spoilage, and aid in development of a sounder and better. balanced animal-type agriculture.

The increased population growth,

greatly expanded use of home freezers, and changed buying, storing, and eating habits all point to a greatly increased consumption of a wide variety of frozen foods.

Locker plants as processors, distributors, and merchandisers of locally produced as well as commercially frozen foods are well situated to benefit from this expanded market.

To cash in on these opportunities, however, calls for capable well-trained management, aggressive advertising and merchandising, well-informed buying, and efficient use of labor and equipment in processing operations.

If cooperative locker plants are to be successful in rendering such a local marketing service, and in meeting competition, they need to employ and pay for topnotch management. Additional working capital also will be needed to carry on necessary processing, storing, and merchandising activities.

The extent to which cooperatives benefit from this new and rapidly expanding food business depends upon their ability to improve and expand their services, to reduce operating costs, and to meet changing competitive conditions.

F

ARMER cooperatives furnish many

types of transportation service to their members and patrons. These associations are primarily concerned in moving agricultural commodities to shipping point, local or central market, processing plant or storage warehouse, and in the return movement of farm production supplies.

The first successful cooperative terminal market sales agency was organized by Corn Belt stockmen in 1889. Its objective was to reduce marketing and transportation costs. Sales offices were established at the Chicago, St. Louis, Omaha, and Kansas City markets.

Following this, livestock shipping associations were established in many parts of the country. Through these, stockmen with less than carlots could join with neighbors and make up carloads. Animals shipped in this way could then be sold on terminal markets rather than to local buyers. A number of farm supply purchasing associations in different parts of the country were later organized. Such arrangements enabled farmers to purchase small quantities of fertilizer, feed, machinery and equipment on the basis of the carload freight rate, which materially reduced their total transportation costs.

Associations Form

The demonstrated advantages of livestock shipping and purchasing associations led to the evolution of the more recent cooperative transportation associations. These are usually of a federated type. They have met the need of those cooperatives which as individual associations probably would have insufficient volume to own or operate their own transportation equipment. By coordinating the transportation activities of several cooperatives, freight charges are lowered for each participating association.

Many of these transportation associations also perform a freight forwarder service; that is, assembly of small lot shipments into carload quantities. These can then move at the lower carload rates with resultant savings. In addition, members and patrons usually receive pickup and delivery services.

One of the largest cooperative transportation associations, Northern Cooperatives, Inc., is located at Wadena, Minn. Organized in 1933, its volume of business has increased steadily since that time. During 1953 it did a total volume of marketing, purchasing and transportation business of $7.6 million for its 169 member agricultural cooperatives, compared with $1.4 million for 1943, or an increase of about 5 times. It transports an average of 80 million pounds of dairy products and farm and creamery supplies annually. Net savings to members for 1953 amounted to about $70,000.

The cooperative adds various services to these savings, whose value cannot readily be determined in dollars and cents. Members have realized additional returns from carlot buying of many types of supplies. They also have secured carload rail rates on commodities marketed.

Motortruck transportation has furnished the farmer-producer with an elastic marketing facility. This en

ables him to choose the time, place and size of load to be transported with minimum restrictions. It has also widely decentralized marketing and has shifted established price registering market centers.

In an effort to reduce transportation costs, many of the larger cooperatives own and operate large fleets of trucks and other types of transportation equipment. In 1955 it was estimated that farmer cooperatives in the United States owned or leased over 30,000 trucks. Thousands of tons of agricultural commodities and farm supplies are hauled in this privately operated equipment annually. In many areas, it is not unusual for centralized and

federated types of cooperatives to have

fleets of more than 100 motortrucks.

Improved transportation equipment helps cooperatives reduce costs. Consumers Cooperative Association, Kansas City, Mo., hauls anhydrous ammonia from plant at Lawrence, Kans., in this newly developed transport.

acquired barge equipment for transporting grain, fertilizer, petroleum and lumber on the Illinois, Mississippi, and Columbia Rivers, and on intercoastal waterways.

A number of cooperatives operating pipelines. They are used to move petroleum refineries have acquired crude oil to refineries and refined petroleum products from refineries to bulk storage terminals. Other cooperatives own tank cars used for rail

transportation of both crude oil and refined petroleum products. In many areas farmers are reducing transportation and handling costs in the bulk storage of petroleum products on farms. Improved types of highway equipment and storage facilities are being used to reduce the costs of distributing such supplies to farmers.

Some cooperatives use air transportation for shipping such agricultural products as livestock, baby chicks, fruits and vegetables, flowers, and plants.

A number of the larger dairy cooperatives have inaugurated programs to reduce transportation and handling costs through bulk transportation of milk in tank trucks from farms to processing plants and terminal markets. Bulk handling of feed and fertilizer from manufacturing plants direct to farmers also has reduced costs to the farmer.