COOPERATIVE AGRICULTURE


a marked increase in production. Cooperatives that direct
the marketing of seventy-five per cent or mote of any crop
can and have always, under normal conditions, sold that
crop at a price satisfactory to themselves This far they
can serve most helpfully the cause of agriculture. But no
cooperative yet brought forth has mastered the vexing
problem of EXCESS or SURPLUS. It is one of the trage-
dies of agricultural life that the very agency which has
profitably sold a crop of normal size has been the agency
which, without intent to do it, has stimulated the production
of succeeding crops which were ot abnormal size and had
to be sold at low prices. There we have the sad spectacle
of farm organizations defeating their own ends and thwart-
ing the very purpose for which they were founded

 What can be done about it' The thing that MUST be
done, if cooperative marketing shall function, is to CON-
TROL NOT ONLY MARKETING. BUT AHEAD OF IT,
CONTROL PRODUCTION

 Whether this can readily be done is the BIG QUESTION
LOOMING UP BEFORE COOPERATIVES. It will have
to be solved or all of our efforts to help ourselves through
organizations will in the end fail. This will apply here in
Florida just as it did in California. We had as well face
facts The cooperatives we are to have in our State will
give us some IMMEDIATE RELIEF and will prove a bless-
ing. But unless our growers by common consent can control
production they will not long be able to control prices.