2 BULLETIN 1266, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
fifties, and the cooperative consumers' stores in 1866. It was a mar- 
keting problem which prompted the Danish peasants to form the first 
creamery in 1882, and a bacon factory (hog-slaughtering and bacon- 
curing plant) in 1887, on a cooperative basis, both designed to facili- 
tate the standardization and efficient distribution of Denmark's two 
most important agricultural products. With the first cooperative 
association founded on practical economic principles, the movement 
gradually spread into every community until it embraced every 
DENMARK 
FIG. 1. — Denmark, lying betweon the North Sen and the Baltic, comprises an area of 
1<;.<;oS square miles, or one-fifth the size of Minnesota. The population density is 
r.Ml.7 persons per square mile, or five and one-half times that of the United States. 
phase of Danish agriculture and became the dominant factor in the 
progress and prosperity of the whole nation. 
To-day the Danish farmers face the modern world markets as 
one collective body of sellers, rather than as 205,000 individual farm- 
ers. Production takes place on individual farm-holdings, but the 
Danish farmers meet the demands of the markets through collective 
ell'ort -group distribution — organized on a cooperative basis. Their 
organization presents two types: (1) The agricultural societies 
