The Strawberry Success
How the Kennewick-Richland Marketing Union proved that cooperation yields higher profits for berry farmers.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
In 1914, Kennewick-Richland strawberries brought the grower $1.75 a crate. In 1915, they brought $1.60. In 1916, they brought $2.43 a crate. We do not know what stronger argument in favor of the Kennewick-Richland Marketing Union could be advanced. The thing the strawberry grower is after is dollars for his berries. This year he got it, and the Marketing Union is responsible. If the grower will contrast the results of 1915—when there was a woeful lack of cooperation and price control was thrown to the winds—with the results obtained this year, he must admit that the salvation of the berry business is in the growers working together. To date, about fifty percent of the Kennewick acreage has signed up. Before the signing is over, this percentage should be raised to one hundred and the membership should come voluntarily.
“The thing the strawberry grower is after is dollars for his berries.”
Agricultural cooperatives remain the bedrock of the Tri-Cities economy, mirroring the century-old tension between individual autonomy and the necessity of collective bargaining in global commodity markets.
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