It’s co-op month. During the month of October many South Dakotans reflect on the century-old cooperative business model and say it is as relevant today as ever.
If you want to learn about cooperatives and their role in South Dakota, South Dakota Farmers Union President Doug Sombke says there’s one person to talk to.
“Hal Clemensen. No doubt in my mind, you know Hal is just a wealth of information, he grew up with it, like I did. His dad was a strong, strong believer in cooperatives, which Hal is too. If you wanted to visit with anybody, that’s the man,” Sombke says.
Farming for nearly 40 years in northeastern South Dakota, Hal Clemensen understands cooperatives because not only is he a member-owner of several, buying seed, fertilizer and fuel for his farm from local cooperatives, but he has served on several of their member-run boards.
“My dad was on the local board for a lot of years when I was growing up. So, it gave me incentive. I’ve been on several co-op boards 30-years invested in co-op boards. I’ve served on co-op boards of Redfield Cenex Oil Company Board, South Dakota Wheat Growers Board, Agtegra Board and now I’m on the CHS Corporate Board,” Clemensen says.
And in case you’re wondering, a cooperative is a business where the customers are the owners. And at year-end, if there are profits, they are paid out to these member-owners.
“Of all the companies I do business with, I see no better system than a co-op and I just think its great that the co-op gives back any profits to its member-owners,” Clemensen says. “You know, I associate with, for instance Target or Walmart or Runnings you know you can do business there. You don’t have to do business, but you do not have any influence in how the company is run, where as in a co-op, you may not always get your way, but you always have influence into how decision are made. And it’s your neighbors that are helping form the policies of the company.”
From its start, the “stronger together” nature of the cooperative model appealed to many living in rural areas of South Dakota, explains Heather Beaner, a retired Air Force Attorney and Mellette corn and soybean farmer who was recently elected to serve on the board of directors for Agtegra, an agriculture cooperative. She markets her corn and soybeans through Agtegra. She also purchases the farm’s inputs like seed and fuel from the cooperative.
“You know, 100 years ago, it was a bunch of farmers getting together saying, “hey, if we pool our grain together, I bet you we can sell it at a better price,” Beaner says.
Farmers are not the only folks who benefit from the cooperative business model. Across South Dakota there are nearly 200 cooperatives providing goods and services to nearly every community, from local foods and fuel to electricity and internet connectivity. In some cases, without the local cooperative, citizens would have to go without essentials, like electricity, telephone, or internet services, explains Randy Houdek, General Manager/CEO of Venture Communications Cooperative.
“When the communications cooperatives were conceived, it was to fill a need to provide service where investor-owned entities didn’t find it attractive,” Houdek says. “Lots of lonely miles and not many customers and its pretty expensive capex, so that didn’t appeal to the investor-owned utilities. So, a bunch of individuals with good foresight took it upon themselves to organize and borrow money and create these cooperatives.”
Randy Houdek says although the products and services they provide may have changed quite a bit over the last 68 years, the cooperative mission of Venture Communications and others remains relevant.
“As these communities start shrinking having a local presence or ownership, being local is very important. We live here. We raise our families here. We hope to retire here and we have a very vested interest in keeping rural America alive,” Houdek says.
Local leadership is among the reasons Heather Beaner, believes cooperatives remain relevant to the individuals and communities they serve.
“The co-op is made up of local people who know the challenges, who have grease under their nails and who know exactly what it is like in these times and the challenges that our owners and customers are facing and we take that into consideration when we’re making the decisions for the good of the co-op,” Beaner says.
Beaner explains that to best serve their members, cooperative boards, like the one she serves on, work to anticipate industry change and challenges so the cooperative can adapt to best serve their member-owners.
To learn more about the cooperatives mentioned in this story, visit SDPB.org, https://venturecomm.net/; https://www.chsinc.com/ ; https://www.agtegra.com/