Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1940, Page 174

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through the medium of these branches of production. Farming
was to an increasing extent concentrated on these branches, and
the large expansion of production gradually required extensive
imports of direct and indirect raw-materials (such as feeding-
stuffs and fertilizers) as well as means of marketing the increased
output. These were the very questions taken up by co-operative
societies of a local or more general type; these societies became
the real centres of work by taking over the three stages of the
agricultural industry: the purchase of raw-materials, the actual
production and the marketing.
Just as the dairy industry was the mother industry of this
development so the co-operative dairy was the first co-operative
institution within agriculture in the narrower sense. In 1882 the
first co-operative dairy was established and this in itself consti-
tuted a form of collaboration which has been of vital importance
to agriculture ever since. A main point of this organisation was
equal payment for the product delivered, in this case the milk,
whether it was supplied by a big or a small farmer, the basis of
payment per unit of weight being of course dependent on quality.
This equality of conditions is an important feature in the
physiognomy of Danish farming in general and explains the
existence of a comparatively large number of smaller farms and
small-holdings whose means of existence then and later depended
in fundamental respects on the form of collaboration practised
through the co-operative societies.
Even this earliest development of the movement revealed the
central principle of co-operation, that the co-operative society
provides a unit of interest between the various sections of agri-
cultural production and marketing. Responsibility, risk and profit
rested with the farmer himself from the preparation and reaping
of the products on the farm and further on until the finished
article left the export harbour.
The next agricultural institution to which the co-operative
principle was extended was the slaughter-house which rose to a
prominent place in the agricultural industry after the marketing
conditions had been completely changed about the middle of the
eighties. The first co-operative bacon factory was established in
1887 on the same principles as the co-operative dairies, but in
one important respect the bacon factories carried the principle
one step further by taking over not only the manufacture of the
finished article but also the marketing of the products for export
at their own, i. e. the producer’s risk. This side of the bacon fac-