Celebrating the ‘future’ of cooperatives this October
October was officially proclaimed “Co-op Month” in Missouri by a proclamation signed by Gov. Mike Parson, recognizing the many ways cooperatives like MFA create shared prosperity for their members and communities.
This year’s theme for the month-long celebration is “The Future is Cooperative,” acknowledging the unique and essential role cooperatives play in providing clean, affordable energy, increasing economic opportunities and improving the quality of life for people in rural America.
Nationwide, more than 30,000 cooperatives account for more than 2 million jobs and generate more than $700 billion in annual revenue.
MFA was organized as a cooperative in 1914 by a visionary group of farmers who recognized the benefit of working together to leverage buying power and their collective voices. MFA continues to operate under that business model, with an extensive network of company-owned retail facilities and local affiliate co-ops serving some 45,000 farmer-owners in Missouri and surrounding states.
Co-op Month has been nationally recognized since 1964, when U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman, a former Minnesota governor, initiated the first such celebration.
MFA and other cooperatives around the world operate under a shared set of cooperative principles that can be traced to the first modern cooperative founded in Rochdale, England, in 1844. These principles are a key reason that MFA and other farmer-owned cooperatives operate differently, by putting the needs of their members first.
- Open and Voluntary Membership
- Democratic Member Control
- Members’ Economic Participation
- Autonomy and Independence
- Education, Training, and Information
- Cooperation Among Cooperatives
- Concern for Community
