CCCD Receives $200,000 to Establish Cooperatives
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced TODAY the selection of 34 organizations for U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA’s) Rural Cooperative Development Grant (RCDG) program grants to help rural cooperatives and small businesses expand and strengthen their capacity to serve rural citizens and communities.
The California Center for Cooperative Development (CCCD) received a $200,000 grant to establish cooperatives. CCCD supports a myriad of cooperatives in California (agricultural, child care, energy, housing, etc.) with start-up, management, and other technical assistance.
Agricultural cooperatives, user-owned and user-controlled businesses, are organized to help farmers gain market power by joining together to market their crops, increase their bargaining power by achieving economies of scale, processing their commodity to add value, and/or to purchase supplies and services. California has approximately 200 agricultural cooperatives and there are more than 4,000 nationwide.
Agricultural Cooperatives differ from other types of businesses in that they are owned by farmer-members, democratically controlled, run by professional management overseen by an elected board of directors, designed to distribute economic benefits to members on the basis of the member’s use of the cooperative (e.g. if more product, more economic gain).
