3c hapter - Index of

166 Locavesting
bustling Basque town of Mondragon to divine the secrets of the
co-op’s success.
In the United States heartland, St. Paul, Minnesota, is home
to CHS Inc., an agricultural and energy co- op owned by farmers,
ranchers, and individual cooperatives. With around $25 billion
in annual sales, it ranks among the Fortune 100 largest companies.
In 2009, the top 100 U.S. co- ops generated $175.6 billion in
revenue. 6
Even regular customers may not be aware that household
brands such as Land O’Lakes, Ocean Spray, Sunkist, Welch’s, and
Organic Valley are cooperatives, owned and operated by many
small farmers and producers. The hardware “chains” True Value
and Ace Hardware are owned by independent retailers that pool
their purchases to more effectively compete with giants like Home
Depot. True Value’s 5,000 retailers rack up around $2 billion
annually. Ace’s 4,600 stores generate around $12 billion in annual
sales. And your news headlines are often brought to you by the
Associated Press, a cooperative owned by its American newspaper
and broadcast members.
Valley of the Co-ops
Vernon County, Wisconsin, is known for its European and
Scandinavian heritage, iconic round barns, and hilly, wooded contours,
thanks to its location in the southwestern part of the state,
which escaped the massive glaciers that shaped the Great Lakes
and much of the Midwest and Northeast. It’s a sparsely populated
area with about 37 residents per square mile, which accounts
for another of the county’s distinguishing characteristics: a preponderance
of cooperatives. In rural areas like Vernon County,
which don’t have enough people or potential profi t to attract corporations,
residents have had to establish their own basic services.
There’s the Vernon Electric Cooperative, formed in 1938,
which provides power to 11,000 member households, and the
Vernon Telephone Cooperative, which offers telephone, cable,
Internet, and wireless services to 7,000 subscribers. There’s
a farm supply co- op, several food co- ops and credit unions, the