To counteract the fragmentation of cooperative development in California, U.S.A., a multi-stage strategy was developed to link capital-intensive agricultural cooperatives with member-intensive consumer cooperatives. The strategy began by identifying issues on which agreements between the two groups could come easily. These included joint sponsorship of a statewide Co-op Month and the initiation of a university Center for Cooperatives. Specific details of the implementation process are discussed.
Cooperation is a worldwide movement that takes different forms in different regions, due to economic, cultural, historical, and political factors. More than 500 million people belong to cooperatives worldwide, and of these 350 million belong to organizations affiliated with the International Cooperative Alliance (Blomqvist, 1984). Despite these large numbers, fragmentation and disunity characterize cooperative development in North America. Consumer cooperatives are divided according to product or service area, agricultural cooperatives remain aloof from consumer cooperatives, and many organizations classified by external criteria as cooperatives do not publicly acknowledge or emphasize their status as cooperatives either to their membership or to the public. Membership statistics for consumer cooperatives in the United States typically include credit unions, memorial societies, and parent-run preschools, although none of these groups use "cooperative" in their title and only rarely in their publications, and there is reason to doubt if members think of the organizations as cooperatives or see themselves as members of coops. The fragmentation makes it difficult to compile economic and social statistics on North American cooperatives. In many sectors of the economy, such as retail food, housing, and child care, to name just a few, there are no current and accurate statistics on the number of cooperatives, their membership, or sales and service volume. The absence of this information is a serious impediment to cooperative development. Organizations cannot work together if they do not know that others exist or how to contact them.