Mr Michael J. Ssali
When people doing the same economic activity choose to join hands by forming an organization such as a cooperative society they are bound to make more progress than they would if they work as individuals.
If for example most farmers in an area are pineapple growers, they are producers of a crop that joins them together. When they meet during social functions they often find themselves talking about the market for their crop – the prices, transport issues, thieves in the field, pests, rain shortage, and a whole range of concerns about their pineapples. However it is possible to share all the problems among themselves as a large group and reduce their individual worries about their economic activity, resulting in bigger profits for all of them.
As the old saying goes, unity is strength. Forming a cooperative society creates strength. When 600 or more farmers in an area choose to put together their savings they can purchase a truck that they can use to transport their crop to far-off markets where it can attract higher prices.
They will have gotten rid of exploitative middle men who would have come to their individual farms and paid them poorly for their produce. In some cases the pineapples get ripe and ready for harvesting but due to lack of transport the farmer may be forced to sell them locally at giveaway prices.
Such a group may even set up a selling centre of their pineapples in the large towns of the country where customers can go for them. They will have created a job for the truck driver and perhaps two more jobs for the turn-boys loading and unloading the pineapples. As a group they will be in a position to make big orders for inputs like fertilisers and tools and pay much less for them because they will be purchasing in bulk. The cooperative society can provide simple loans to individual member farmers to pay school fees, to purchase building materials, or to buy motorcycles to ease local transport.
As a cooperative society the members may decide to diversify their activities and invest in value addition --- pineapple juice making, pineapple chips, or even wine making, thus creating more jobs and increasing members’ incomes.
