434 Progress of Agricultural Co-operation. FAug., 



a competing trader. The societies, also, have not yet fully 

 grasped the value of combined purchasing and selling through 

 their central trading organisation, the Agricultural AVholesale 

 Society. There is evidence of a marked improvement in this 

 respect in the fact that the turnover of that society increased 

 from £276,000 in 1918 to nearly £2,000,000 in 1919, but even 

 that figure represented barely 20 per cent, of the total turnover 

 of the affiliated societies in the commodities which the central 

 society is in a position to obtain for them. The whole of the 

 shares of the Agricultural Wholesale Society are held by affiliated 

 co-operative societies, so that it is in fact as well as in theory 

 the cpntral trading federation of the societies, and not an inde- 

 pendent organisation of whose services they muy or may not 

 avail themselves. 



Co-operative Disposal of Produce.— As this country is not an 

 exporter of agricultural produce, and has built up in the course 

 of generations a highly developed system of internal markets, 

 it is natural that the co-operative movement has made more 

 progress in the combined purchase of the raw m.ateriais of 

 farming than in the disposal of produce. Nevertheless, in certain 

 directions this aspect of the business is now^ developing rapidly. 

 The combined turnover of the co-operative dairy societies in 

 England and Wales last year in milk and milk products approxi- 

 mated to £5,000,000, and now that the dairy industry is decon- 

 fcrolled and State restrictions have been removed a remarkable 

 expansion of the co-operative movement in dairying is in 

 progress. The co-operative handling of home-prod iiced wool is 

 being carried out this season on broad lines which vill enable 

 the farmer through his society to place his wc^ol direct on the 

 world's markets and to obtain full value for it. The latest 

 returns indicate that not less tlian 200.000 fleeces, collected, 

 weighed and classed by the co-operative societies, will be sold 

 on the London wool market during the next few months. The 

 disposal of home-grown meat, also, is beinsj revolationised 

 through tlie gradual adoption by the farmers of the dead weight 

 system, under which their cattle, sheep and pigs are rlaughtered 

 at co-operative abattoirs and sold to the best advantage in local 

 markets and in the big consuming centres. There are now some 

 25 such co-operative abattoirs in full working, extending from 

 Berwick-on-Tweed to the borders of Cornwall, and arrangements 

 are far advanced not only for marketing the meat and edible 

 offals but also for converting inedible offals and waste into 

 valuable by-products such as fertihsers and feeding stuffs. 



