Georgia Cooperative Development Center

Summary

The GCDC's mission is to increase economic opportunities and benefits for people in rural Georgia by fostering growth and success of cooperative enterprises.The GCDC provides assistance to new and emerging agricultural cooperatives, primarily in the area of value-added enterprises, through technical advice and guidance, business analysis and facilitated learning.

Situation

Georgia's agricultural producers face increasingly competitive markets for their products, often accompanied by depressed prices and limited opportunities for adding value through product differentiation and marketing. Although individual, small producers frequently lack the economies of size and scale necessary to make value-added ventures successful, groups of producers working cooperatively may be able to do so. At the same time, many of Georgia's rural, and heavily agricultural, counties are also among its poorest and are consistently defined as persistent poverty areas of the state. Development of value-added agricultural enterprises serves the dual role of enhancing income to producers and creating or retaining jobs in rural, persistent poverty areas of Georgia.

Response

The Georgia Cooperative Development Center was established in 2004 as a partnership between the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences' Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development, Golden Triangle Resource Conservation and Development Council, and a number of other Georgia RC&D's. The GCDC's mission is to increase economic opportunities and benefits for people in rural Georgia by fostering growth and success of cooperative enterprises. The GCDC provides assistance to new and emerging agricultural cooperatives, primarily in the area of value-added enterprises, through technical advice and guidance, business analysis and facilitated learning. Assistance is also provided to local business leaders in selecting and forming steering committees to lead projects. The GCDC works with an organizing committee to investigate the feasibility of a project, to determine the best and most appropriate legal structure, to develop a business plan, and if needed, help plan equity fund drives. The GCDC also works with existing cooperatives to ensure their continued viability. Assistance includes the same services as provided to new cooperatives and includes updating business plans, feasibility studies for capital expansions and evaluating new markets as well as a variety of training programs. The GCDC also endeavors to link cooperatives to other businesses for their mutual benefit.

Impact

During 2008, the Georgia Cooperative Development Center helped to establish one new cooperative in the state, began the ground work to establish several more and continued to provide guidance to those it helped to establish in previous years. A cooperative of chestnut growers in southwest Georgia and northwest Florida was formed to market fresh chestnuts and to process chestnuts into flour as a value-added product, as well as to explore opportunities for additional value-added chestnut products. U.S.A. Chestnut Growers, Inc. has been successful in securing agreements with retailers to purchase its grade A nuts and is currently working with the university's food science department to manufacture its first batch of flour. The GCDC is also working with a group of producers of various agricultural products in Morgan County to form a cooperative that will develop and promote a local Morgan County brand. Plans are to begin with beef and dairy products and expand to include other products as recognition for a local brand becomes more established. The project is supported by the Madison-Morgan Conservancy, Inc. as a means of maintaining land in farming use in the county and preserving the area's rural character. Other producer groups in the organizational process include pomegranate growers, olive growers, beef producers, and apiarists. Several existing cooperatives, including Baker County Sweet Corn Growers, and Georgia Equine Resource Management were provided the ongoing technical assistance necessary to help them continue as viable businesses and more than twenty additional producer groups representing commodities as diverse as poultry, beef, sea food, and vegetables, as well as agri-tourism and farmers markets were assisted in some way as they explore the potential for establishing cooperative business structures. It is estimated that these cooperative activities created or saved between 75 and 100 jobs in Georgia's rural areas during 2008. It is estimated that since its creation in 2004, the Georgia Cooperative Development Center has assisted in the development or further development of 40 agribusinesses with over 1,200 members. For those operations for which investment and sales information is available, investment exceeds $12 million with annual sales of over $4.5 million. The GCDC has numerous active projects which are expected to result in successful cooperative businesses in the future adding jobs and economic opportunity to some of the most impoverished counties in the U.S. The GCDC also continues to work closely with the Georgia Cooperative Council, participating in both the 2008 Couples Cooperative Conference and the 2008 Youth Cooperative Conference. These activities serve to educate current and future agricultural cooperative members, promote awareness of cooperatives as a viable business structure and generate future cooperative projects as a means of sustaining agriculture and fostering economic development in rural Georgia.

State Issue

Agribusiness Development/Value Added

Details

• Year: 2008
• Geographic Scope: State
• County: Clarke
• Program Areas:
  • Agriculture & Natural Resources