Cooperative Spirit: ‘Buffalo Commons’ & a strong cooperative heritage

     On an emotional level, a 1987 article written by two professors from Rutgers University, Deborah and Frank Popper, aggravated many North Dakotans and helped motivate them to look for ways to improve the state’s economic future.  The essay suggested that the Great Plains, including North Dakota, was like a “buffalo commons” and that large areas of the state should be returned to natural grasslands, uprooting entire communities in the process.  The professors argued that farm programs and other federal assistance to people in these sparsely populated areas were greater than the derived economic benefits, and it would therefore be more prudent to relocate people away from the Great Plains (Egerstrom). 

     Many ranchers, farmers, and communities felt the article was an assault on their livelihoods and legitimacy.  The hostility towards the Poppers was so great that they needed armed guards at some of their speeches given in the Great Plains region (Popper).  The reaction by North Dakotans to the article was one of outright indignation.  However, it started many people thinking about the plight of North Dakota.  North Dakotans wanted to prove that the state was economically viable, and cooperative development was seen as a possible method to improve the state's outlook.

     Cooperative enterprise has typically been strong in North Dakota and Minnesota.  As part of a 1995 special section in the Fargo Forum concerning cooperative activity, one writer pointed out that "the seeds of the current boom in farmer-owned agriculture processing cooperatives were planted even before North Dakota became a state" (Gerboth). This has partly been attributed to the cultural heritage of the region; many immigrants who settled in the area were Northern Europeans who were accustomed to cooperative ideas (Egerstrom).  Northern Europe has a strong base of cooperative businesses; in Denmark, for instance, five cooperatives control about 80 percent of the market for processed food (Duffey).  Some of America's largest cooperative businesses, including Land O' Lakes and Cenex Harvest States, originated in the Northern Great Plains region.  When describing factors that contributed to North Dakota's cooperative activity in the 1990s, Sarah Vogel, the state's former commissioner of agriculture, pointed out that North Dakota had a strong base on which to build; many North Dakotans were already members of cooperatives and were therefore knowledgeable about the cooperative structure of business (Vogel, October 1996).

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