The Collective Farms in Your Grocery Cart

Walk through an American grocery store, and you may pass one collective farming operation after another without realizing it.

Ocean Spray. Sunkist. Land O’Lakes. Welch’s. Blue Diamond. Cabot.

The names are familiar. The business structure behind them may be less so.

Each is tied to an agricultural cooperative — an enterprise owned by the farmers who produce the milk, cranberries, grapes, citrus, almonds or other products sold under its name.

They are collective farming arrangements that have survived, and in some cases prospered, for generations.

Yet they bear little resemblance to the collective farms that became synonymous with agricultural failure in the Soviet Union, China and Vietnam.

The difference comes down largely to what is shared — and what isn’t.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s most recent annual survey cited here, the United States had 1,620 farmer, rancher and fishery cooperatives generating a combined $275.8 billion in revenue.

Their members pool resources, but generally not their farms.

A family farmer may own the land, decide what to plant, manage workers, buy equipment, and assume the financial risk of a bad year.

What becomes collective is often what happens after the crop leaves the farm.

Processing plants are expensive. So are distribution networks, advertising campaigns and the work required to get a product onto the shelves of grocery stores across the country.

A single cranberry farmer might have little chance of building a nationally recognized juice brand.

Hundreds of cranberry farmers working together can.

That is the idea behind the cooperative.

The farmers remain independent producers while jointly owning an organization that can process, market and sell what they grow. A member can also leave.

That distinction separates the American agricultural cooperative from some of history’s most troubled experiments in collective farming.

Under the failed versions, governments essentially pooled the land itself.

Farmers who once worked individual plots became workers in a larger agricultural system. Governments set production targets, and output went into a common pool.

The incentive structure changed with it.

If additional effort did not produce a meaningful additional reward for the individual farmer or household, there was little economic reason to produce much beyond what was required.

The consequences could be severe.

Agricultural production stagnated. Crops failed. In the worst cases, food shortages contributed to widespread hunger and starvation.

China began moving away from its commune system in 1978.

One of the most famous episodes came in Anhui province, where farmers in a village quietly divided farmed fields among households.

The arrangement was not initially authorized.

But the harvest that followed was larger than those the village had seen in years.

What began as a local experiment helped point toward China’s household responsibility system, which gave farm families greater control over production while requiring them to meet obligations to the state.

Vietnam later moved away from its own collective agricultural system. According to the International Rice Research Institute, the country went from being a chronic importer of rice to becoming one of the world’s largest rice exporters.

American cooperatives had followed a very different path.

They pooled the selling while leaving much of the farming alone.

And participation was voluntary.

That model has proved remarkably durable.

USDA reports that 393 agricultural cooperatives — roughly one in five — have operated for at least 100 years.

Sunkist traces its cooperative roots to California citrus growers who organized in 1893.

Ocean Spray began in 1930 when three cranberry growers joined together. Today, it belongs to about 700 family farms.

The recognizable name on the supermarket shelf ultimately belongs to those growers.

The financial arrangement reflects that ownership.

After expenses, cooperative earnings can return to members based largely on how much business each farmer conducted through the cooperative during the year.

The farmer who sells more through the organization receives a larger share than one who sells less.

That preserves a connection between individual production and individual reward.

It is a small distinction with enormous consequences.

Both systems can be described as collective agriculture. Both ask farmers to work together. Both can involve shared equipment, processing, and distribution.

But one collectivizes much of the farm itself.

The other collectivizes the expensive things surrounding the farm.

That is why the next time someone pushes a cart past a bottle of Ocean Spray cranberry juice, a Sunkist orange, or a package of Cabot cheese, they are looking at the products of collective action.

Just not the kind history made infamous.