Director’s Commentary: Shermain D. Hardesty

Collaboration and Commitment

For many producers, collaboration and collective action in marketing are critical to their economic viability. Acting individually, they may find it difficult to maintain the steady flow of high-quality product required to establish a consistent presence in the market place, and to have the market power needed to bargain for a fair price. They may lack economies of size in processing, transportation, and advertising. It is also difficult for one person to run an agricultural operation and develop the expertise and personal contacts needed for successful marketing. Collaboration, through a cooperative or another voluntary marketing group, enables producers to enhance their personal well-being.

Among the requirements of a successful collaboration is a committed membership. This commitment can be categorized into three basic forms, which happen to be related to the cooperative principles—user-financed, user-benefit and user-control. The first type of commitment is financial; members of a collaboration must commit their financial support by investing in the organization. Secondly, members have to commit their broad-based support to the group’s objectives. A collaboration will falter if members undermine its objectives--for example, if they violate their marketing agreements by selling their higher quality crop to other firms. The third type of commitment is participation in the group’s governance. A collaboration cannot thrive if most of its members pass off their governance responsibilities to a small group of leaders. These three basic commitments require members to consider the collaboration’s success with a long term perspective.

Both new and established collaborations need member commitment. For new collaborations, financial commitment is essential to adequately capitalize the new venture. The members must also provide their broad-based support to reinforce the collaboration’s reason for being. All members of a new collaboration need to engage in some way in its governance; the broader input builds a stronger organization.

Similarly, established collaborations will falter if member commitment wanes. Continuing financial support from members is essential to revitalize aging facilities and undertake new ventures. As collaborations mature, members’ situations often change such that they no longer share the same objectives; this divergence of interests can severely undermine a collaboration. Over the years, many members lose interest in the collaboration and leave the governance to a small group of members—which weakens the organization.

Recently, three groups of producers that I have been working with were faced with commitment challenges. One group decided to cease operating because it lacked the financial resources to have any hired staff; its leaders could not support the organization solely on a volunteer basis. Conversely, another small group rallied together when faced with adversity; they formalized the collaboration that they had been considering for over two years and each member invested over $50,000 to launch the new venture. The third group is still struggling to build commitment; there is a small group of leaders who believe that they can enhance their economic viability by collaborating, but many of the producers seem to lack commitment to the collaboration.

It is easy for me to speak to producers about how collaborative action can benefit their personal well-being. It is considerably more difficult to build and maintain a group of producers committed to the collaboration. In the end, it boils down to each producer being willing to make three kinds of commitment—investing to finance the collaboration, providing broad-based support of the organization’s objectives, and participating in its governance. Building such commitment requires that producers engage in open communication with each other.

 

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