Blake Valerius

Agricultural Cooperatives of Colorado Blake Valerius

Colorado agricultural cooperatives may seem like a dull subject, yet it isn't as much what they are that makes them interesting, it is more of what they accomplish. When surveying the US economy macroscopically, the cooperative business form seems like a strange abomination of confusing principles cast off to the side of relevance; after all, many of its tenants on the surface run opposite to the cutthroat wilderness that the US economy is known for. Cooperatives are often unfamiliar and difficult to wrap your head around. And when I set out on my road trip across Colorado to interview as many managers and CEOs of agricultural cooperatives as I could, I didn't even fully understand what co-ops were or did. It was only after dozens of conversations that I came to see what, at the root, cooperatives are. If you wanted to make an all-encompassing, definitive statement about the cooperative business model, and be correct, I suppose you could say that cooperatives are sensible solutions to common issues among a similar people. This book is about the people and businesses that band together using this obscure business form to tackle issues that agriculturalists face throughout the state of Colorado.