Taken together, these three Principles tell an important story about cooperative ownership. Principle 1 gives growers a choice to join. Principle 2 gives members a voice in the enterprise they own. Principle 4 protects their control as that enterprise operates in the wider world. Choice. Voice. Control. They are not abstract cooperative ideals. They are part of what makes being a grower-owner meaningfully different from simply being a supplier. So far, we have mostly looked inward, exploring the relationship between growers and the cooperative they own and govern. Next time, we turn outward: What does a cooperative owe its cooperative neighbors — and its actual ones?
Dr. Keri Jacobs, Executive Director,
Graduate Institute of Cooperative Leadership, and Partridge Chair in Cooperative Leadership, University of Missouri
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.
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SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2026
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