THE COOPERATIVE EDGE
Harvesting The Principles If you spend much time learning, teaching, or writing about cooperatives, eventually you arrive at the Cooperative Principles. It would be shameful not to! An educational piece on cooperatives worth its page space should explain not only what cooperatives do, but what makes them different. The Principles are one of the clearest ways to do that. For our purposes, I’m borrowing a graphic from the National Cooperative Business Association ncbaclusa.coop (thank you, NCBA CLUSA).
Over the next few issues, The Cooperative Edge will look at these Cooperative Principles through the lens of Blue Diamond Growers ’ grower-members – maybe you are one! The principles “live” with the International Cooperative Alliance ica.coop/en (ICA), the global steward of the cooperative identity. The ICA’s current Statement on the Cooperative Identity, adopted in 1995, includes the definition of a cooperative, cooperative values, and the Cooperative Principles. Fun nugget: We — me included — often refer to them as the “Seven Cooperative Principles,” but they are, officially, the “Cooperative Principles,” with perennial discussions by the ICA membership about amending or adding to them. These Principles reflect our current understanding and cooperative values, but they are rooted in a deep history, back to the Rochdale Pioneers, who opened their cooperative store in Rochdale, England, in 1844 and helped shape what became the modern cooperative movement. That history matters: The Principles were never meant to be decorative. They
are practical, living guidelines, and they describe how cooperatives put their values into action.
Now, if order matters to you, this may be mildly irritating: we are not starting with Principle 1. Principle 1: Voluntary and Open Membership deserves due treatment, especially for a cooperative like Blue Diamond Growers , where grower participation is voluntary, yet Blue Diamond Growers also operates with longer-term grower commitments. For Blue Diamond and its marketing cooperative peers in dairy, citrus, livestock and a host of other commodities, supply planning matters when marketing output on behalf of its members. We will come back to that in the next issue. For now, harvest season gives us a better, albeit less obvious, place to begin: Principle 5: Education, Training and Information. The ICA’s guidance on the Cooperative Principles explains that Principle 5 calls on cooperatives to provide education and training for members, elected representatives, managers, and employees so they can contribute effectively to the development of their cooperatives. But cooperatives go beyond that, also informing the general public, especially young people and opinion leaders, about the nature and benefits of cooperation. Almond harvest is approaching, and it would be easy to think of harvest as the point when Blue Diamond Growers ’ role begins in earnest. After all, Blue Diamond Growers is a marketing cooperative. Growers produce the almonds; the cooperative markets them. But that misses something important. A strong marketing cooperative is involved in the life of the crop long before almonds leave the orchard.
10
ALMOND FACTS
Made with FlippingBook - Online Brochure Maker