Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 123 



CO-OPERATIVE BUTCHERING AND CURING ASSOCIATIONS. 



Nearly all of our meat comes from the central packing plants 

 at Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City and Omaha. The farmers of 

 Kansas last year bought from five to seven million dollars' worth 

 of meat from the butcher shops while they were shipping millions 

 of dollars worth of live stock out of the state. 



Co-operation in eliminating this waste has reached its highest 

 development in Denmark. The Danish bacon is celebrated the 

 country over. In that little country, about one-fifth the size of 

 Kansas, there are thirty-five co-operative curing plants with ninety 

 thousand members. They kill annually about a million and a half 

 hogs. These curing plants are owned by the farmers who produce 

 the hogs, and are conducted by the men whom they hire. Thus the 

 farmers own the bacon and hams when they are cured. At that 

 point a co-operative export association takes charge of the product 

 and sends it to markets like Liverpool, London, Paris and Berlin, 

 to be sold direct to the consumer, and after deducting the expenses 

 the balance is remitted to the men who raised the hogs. 



CO-OPERATION BETWEEN THE FARMER AND CONSUMER. 



The farmer will not make much progress in shortening the 

 road to the consumer until the consumer himself becomes inter- 

 ested and meets the producer half way. Obviously, the consumer 

 has no particular interest in, where he buys or from whom he buys, 

 unless he can buy at a lower price or can get better goods at the 

 same price. In a word, the advantages of direct selling must be 

 shared by both parties to the transaction. 



We are now trying to educate the farmer regarding the bene- 

 fits to him of co-operation, in production and marketing. It is just 

 as necessary that the consumer be educated regarding the advan- 

 tages to him of co-operative buying. Our present system of buy- 

 ing is essentially wasteful. When we were producing more food 

 than we could consume, there was no particular reason for econ- 

 omy. Food has since become scarce, yet we continue these waste- 

 ful methods. Formerly the village or town lived largely off the 

 surrounding country. Then the local market was the farmer's 

 chief market. The town and country were interdependent. Now 

 the farmer ships what he has to sell to a central market like Kan- 

 sas City, Chicago or New York. Now the town and country are 

 independent. 



