New Book Celebrates Co-op Month, Int'l Year of Cooperatives

By CnAgri2012-08-31 19:54:16 Print

October is Co-op Month in the United States. This year the month-long celebration is especially significant because 2012 has been designated by the 193 member countries of the United Nations as the International Year of Cooperatives. A special book is being released that further explores cooperatives.

E. G. Nadeau, the author of The Cooperative Solution, has a PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has spent the last 40 years researching, developing, teaching and writing about cooperatives in the United States and in 20 other countries. The book explores how the United States can tame recessions, reduce inequality and protect the environment elucidates the widespread role of cooperatives in the US economy and makes the case for greatly expanding their role in the future as a means to stabilize the economy and improve the quality of life for its citizens.

Cooperatives are businesses that are owned and democratically controlled by their members. There are several hundred thousand of them in the world with an estimated 1 billion members. In the US, 30,000 co-ops have over 200 million member-owners. Despite their major presence in the world economy and in the United States, this democratically-owned part of the private sector is inadequately understood and greatly underappreciated.

Mutual insurance companies, including industry giants such as Nationwide and State Farm, are owned on a "one policy, one vote" basis by their policyholders. About 7,000 credit unions serving over 90 million members and virtually every community in the United States, are financial cooperatives democratically owned by their members. And there are many more co-ops in agriculture (e.g., Land O'Lakes and Sunkist), retail and wholesale firms (e.g., Ace Hardware and the National Cooperative Grocery Association), healthcare (Group Health Cooperative), housing, and other sectors.