The Rural Co-op ~ 1950 USIA - US Army; Rockingham Cooperative, Harrisonburg, Virginia

more at http://quickfound.net/

'Shows how farmers in Rockingham County, Va. improved their businesses by forming cooperative enterprises. R.1. Farmers conduct business at their cooperative general store, gas station and milk plant. R.2. They work together to plan and build a new poultry plant. A typical board meeting illustrates how the cooperative organization functions.'

Originally a public domain film, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://rockinghamcoop.com/

"MISSION STATEMENT:

As a farmer-owned cooperative, we serve as a resource to exceed our customer's expectations by providing goods and services which enable us to invest in our valued employees, facilities and the community!

 Rockingham Cooperative is headquartered in Harrisonburg, Virginia, with retail stores in Harrisonburg, Bridgewater, Elkton, Timberville, Woodstock, Monterey, Waynesboro, Stuarts Draft, Troutville, Wirtz and Strasburg, Virginia. We are retail farm and consumer products stores with a presence in Rockingham, Shenandoah, Augusta, Highland, Botetourt and Franklin counties...

Since 1921, Rockingham Cooperative has provided our local communities with high quality goods used in all walks of life and we invite you to visit our stores."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise". Cooperatives may include:

-businesses owned and managed by the people who use their services (a consumer cooperative)

-organizations managed by the people who work there (worker cooperatives)

-multi-stakeholder or hybrid cooperatives that share ownership between different stakeholder groups. For example, care cooperatives where ownership is shared between both care-givers and receivers. Stakeholders might also include non-profits or investors.

-second- and third-tier cooperatives whose members are other cooperatives

-platform cooperatives that use a cooperatively owned and governed website, mobile app or a protocol to facilitate the sale of goods and services.

Research published by the Worldwatch Institute found that in 2012 approximately one billion people in 96 countries had become members of at least one cooperative. The turnover of the largest three hundred cooperatives in the world reached $2.2 trillion.

Cooperative businesses are typically more economically resilient than many other forms of enterprise, with twice the number of co-operatives (80%) surviving their first five years compared with other business ownership models (41%). Cooperatives frequently have social goals which they aim to accomplish by investing a proportion of trading profits back into their communities. As an example of this, in 2013, retail co-operatives in the UK invested 6.9% of their pre-tax profits in the communities in which they trade as compared with 2.4% for other rival supermarkets.

Since 2002 cooperatives and credit unions could be distinguished on the Internet by use of a .coop domain. Since 2014, following International Cooperative Alliance's introduction of the Cooperative Marque, ICA cooperatives and WOCCU credit unions can also be identified by a coop ethical consumerism label...