The cooperative business model is prolific and is embedded in nearly every corner of our U.S. economy: • Nearly 900 electric cooperatives (RECs) power 22 million homes, businesses, farms, and schools across 48 states1 • 4,300 credit unions saved consumers $11.2 billion in lower interest rates alone in 20242 • More than 1,600 producer-owned cooperatives generate roughly $297 billion in business volume annually on behalf of their members3 • 65,000 housing co-ops make affordable and permanent housing possible for more than 1.5 million families, students, and seniors in this country4 • 15,000 workers own and control the nearly 1,300 worker-owned businesses in the U.S., ensuring that the business operates for the benefit of its employees5
About Dr. Keri Jacobs Dr. Keri L. Jacobs is executive director of the Graduate Institute of Cooperative Leadership (GICL), associate professor of agricultural and applied economics, and Partridge Chair in Cooperative Leadership at the University of Missouri. She works with cooperative CEOs, management teams, and boards across the agricultural sector on governance, financial oversight, and the board’s role in strategy development. Through GICL, she designs and facilitates director and leadership development programs and regularly engages with cooperative boards on complex organizational issues. Her research and outreach are grounded in sustained collaboration with cooperatives and industry partners and focus on how collective action and cooperative structures can strengthen producers’ position within agricultural supply chains. Dr. Jacobs serves on the NCBA CLUSA Cooperative Economics Council and the Nationwide Board Council and is North Central Director for the Extension Section of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. Raised on her family’s hog and row-crop farm in eastern Iowa, she holds a B.A. in economics from Coe College and a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from North Carolina State University.
Cooperatives are collectives of people working toward a common goal. And people show up collectively when markets tilt too far or leave gaps. When farmers faced concentrated buyers of their products, they organized to gain scale and bargaining power. When communities lacked access to affordable electricity, financial services, or broadband, they built it themselves. When independent businesses needed to compete with national chains, they formed purchasing cooperatives. Remove cooperatives from the American economy, and you would see entire systems strain. Why has this model endured for more than a century? Because it solves real problems in real markets. It works. In agriculture, this structure has shaped entire supply chains for more than a century. From dairy and grain to specialty crops and tree nuts, producer-owned cooperatives help to improve the prices farmers and ranchers receive from their supply and value chains, and they create value through processing capacity, branding, aggregation, and risk management. They have allowed farmers to move beyond being price takers and into being value creators. Cooperatives are not an alternative to capitalism. They are its purest form, built around use, not outside investment. Built around people and purpose over exported profitability. Cooperatives are an integral part of America’s economic backbone, and agriculture is one of the places where that backbone is strongest. In the next article, we will focus on producer-owned cooperatives: how they emerged, why they became so prevalent, and how their value proposition has evolved in today’s global, capital-intensive marketplace.
Dr. Keri Jacobs, Executive Director,
Graduate Institute of Cooperative Leadership, and Partridge Chair in Cooperative Learning, University of Missouri
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MARCH–APRIL 2026
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