DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE


 MORE ABOUT COOPERATIVE MARKETING
 -Its Possibilities and Impossibilities-
 By NATHAN MAYO, Commissioner of Agriculture

 Heretofore in this publication we discussed the topic
"CAN COOPERATIVE MARKETING DO IT ALL." In this
paper we pointed out some of the troubles which come to
cooperatives, calling special attention to the menace of sur-
plus production-an unhappy aftermath of many coopera-
tive enterprises in the past.
 Nothing in this article was designed to "throw cold
water" upon cooperative effort in Florida or elsewhere,
despite the fact that a very few of our friends seem to have
so construed it. We are in no sense opposed to this move-
ment- we are in the true sense very much in favor of it.
But we still stand upon our position taken in the article
referred to. WE KNOW THAT COOPERATIVE MARKET-
ING IS NOT A PERFECT PANACEA FOR THE
TROUBLES OF FARMING. IT HAS NOT ALWAYS
WORKED SUCCESSFULLY, PARTICULARLY IN THE
HANDLING OF THE SURPLUS WHICH IS LIKELY TO
FOLLOW IN ITS WAKE Here let us quote from C. A.
Cobb, editor of the SOUTHERN RURALIST, who says m
an editorial under the date of January 1st:
 "The best cooperation can do in marketing is to put
over an outstanding job of selling the products entrusted to
it. And when this is well done, over-production with all its
train of evils is not only invited but is inevitable, WITHOUT
SOME MEASURE OF CONTROL. This is what has hap-
pened in California, where cooperation in this country had
its birth. If you doubt this, write the raisin growers and
the prune growers and any of the rest. Cooperation is no
answer to tariff discrimination against agriculture; it is
no answer to labor restriction m the interest of higher
wages for industrial workers. Cooperation is no answer to
the burden placed upon agriculture through the govern-
mental guaranteed income of industry."