News

CoBank on the farm co-op merger wave

The trend of farm co-op consolidation is expected to continue, “We’ve seen a pretty significant merger wave here  in the mid-2010s in the co-op space and the future is for continued consolidation, perhaps not at the same pace we’ve seen,” says Will Secor, a CoBank economist tells Brownfield Ag News the big driver is to increase value for co-op farmer members, “Whether that’s through efficiencies of scale, whether it’s managerial efficiency that they can get, better bargaining power through their input suppliers, they’re all just trying to drive to get better. And, one way to do that is by being bigger.” But, Secor tells Brownfield going bigger isn’t always better. He says co-ops need to make sure it makes sense for their members.

AUDIO:  Brownfield Ag News interviewed Will Secor at the 2018 NAFB convention ~