Make No Small Plans: A Cooperative Revival for Rural America

This book is a call to action by a journalist who has monitored and chronicled political and economic changes for the past three decades. The first chapter offers an historical and cultural perspective for why cooperatives can revive rural America. The second and third chapters recall personal experience in both studying and tripping over irreversible changes in agriculture and world markets. The middle three chapters explore successful cooperative in the Netherlands, in America, and alternative American communities that continue to succeed by maintaining a strong cooperative spirit. The final three chapters look ahead, at the technology and knowledge transfers between countries, at the tools American states are using to promote economic development, and at the creative explosion of new cooperative ventures.

Our extensive grain farms are highly "developed" enterprises - whose groewth has pushed people off land. They bring in billions of dollars to Canada's economy, most of which flow right back off the farm and out of the rural community. Only community-based development - people taking initiative and doing it themselves - and a business plan for integration and value-added, offer a good chance of a different future. Egerstrom's line about a future that can be good for agriculture, but not for rural people is another one for the highlight reel. --Brett Fairbairn, Centre for the Study of Cooperative, University of Saskatchewan