Each year in October, many cooperatives pause to celebrate National Cooperative Month.  This year, the theme “Owning our Identity” focuses on what makes a cooperative different from other businesses. 

Butterflies are primary pollinators for many vegetables and herbs, helping to ensure a good harvest on Virginia farms. The delicate wings that propel them from flower to flower can carry them many miles to transform the agricultural landscape.

Though most closely associated with weather, the butterfly effect has been used to describe a broad range of situations where one small act can have far-reaching consequences. The Southside Virginia Fruit and Vegetable Producers Association is a real-world example of this phenomenon in action.

Like most people in the service industry, Lisa Raiola of the Hope & Main (HM) food incubator in Warren, Rhode Island, had to reimagine her operation due to COVID’s devastating impacts. With a 30-year career focused on distributive justice, her first move tackled area food insecurity, turning the historic HM building—once an elementary school—into a community distribution point for redirected school lunch meals. The food amount and quality, however, wasn’t suitable for multiple family meals.

Local butcher Katie Adkins suddenly found herself in high demand when New Englanders decided to take matters into their own hands to address a COVID-created food supply chain crisis. Residents started raising their own livestock on small family farms and were clamoring for local processors to deliver “prime cuts” for their tables.

Connecticut’s Farmington River has long been known for its scenic beauty and recreational opportunities but has recently gained some renown as the state’s oldest archaeological site. While artifacts uncovered on the banks near Avon offer insights into the lives of ice age inhabitants, evidence of the creativity and resilience of American farmers can be found a mere 20 miles away at Freund’s Farm Market and Bakery in nearby Litchfield County.

Named to honor a beloved family pet, an adopted black Lab-Border Collie mix, Black Dog Farm originally started with four chickens and a dream and has since grown into a successful woman-owned rural small business on a 35-acre homestead in the hills near Livingston, Montana.     

Gary and Debra Norris are your typical retirees. They spent almost 15 years renting houses in a local single family housing development so they could enjoy the amenities available in the Crossville, Tenn. area. After renting several houses over the years, they decided it was time to settle down and purchase their own home. They talked to a friend of theirs, whom all of their children had purchased homes with USDA Rural Development loans, so they thought they would give it a try. Initially, the obstacle was credit.

If you’ve picked up a program at a major sporting event, subscribed to an agriculture magazine, or used a workbook while studying, chances are good that Midstates Group printed it right here in north central South Dakota. This business has clients that reach coast-to-coast and span everything from professional sports to catalogs, agriculture parts books to alternative health publications. When we say ‘read all about it,’ you probably already have.

Nutrient management is a major concern for America’s dairy farmers, but they can’t always have a serious conversation about it with people who aren’t in the industry. In fact, one Connecticut farm has found the path to producing a new product from composted cow manure to be liberally paved with “poo puns.”

With three months until the business was closing, the employees at Bemis Manufacturing were up against the clock. The owner of the wood manufacturing business was reaching retirement and needed to sell, a move that would close a 100-year-old operation and threaten the workforce of the largest employer in the rural community of Crandon in northern Wisconsin.