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Maharishi Vedic Organic Cooperatives The international organizational unit for organically certifying groups of farmers is called a Grower Group. These Grower Groups are made up of farmers in the same locale, growing similar crops, under similar conditions, and sharing resources. Maharishi Vedic Organic Agriculture Institute is currently establishing such organizational units called Maharishi Vedic Organic Cooperatives. These Co-ops consist of 500 to 1000 farmers who have joined together with their land and their labor under one management and organizational structure. This allows for economies of scale in farming, and allows for the use of machinery and more up-to-date farming technologies and methodologies, resulting in higher productivity and efficiency. These units also qualify more easily for bank financing, attract and allow for more infrastructure development and more easily gain government recognition and support. The Co-ops also provide for consolidated marketing into better and higher paying markets. Experiments already done in many developing countries have demonstrated that it is possible to increase agricultural productivity for most known crops by large margins with proper technology and management. From a technical point of view the reasons for low agricultural productivity in poor countries is both known and manageable. The reasons include such things as lack of water, fertility increasing methods, suitable seeds, mechanization, management, economies of scale, storage, access to market, etc. Raising agricultural productivity is constrained primarily by the small size of holdings: the average farm size in the developing nations may be a mere 2 hectares, a size so small that productivity enhancing technologies and management methods become unaffordable and uneconomical. The key then to raising agricultural productivity is to merge hundreds of small farms into larger Maharishi Vedic Organic Cooperatives of at least 500-1000 hectares. These farming co-operatives would consist of hundreds of members who pool land and other physical resources into a co-operative entity in exchange for equity shares proportional to the value of the asset contributed. The co-operative then hires in labor and some managerial services from the members against a wage payment, and also hires salaried professional management and technical expertise from the Maharishi Vedic Organic Agriculture Cooperative System. The individual shareholder members of the co-operative receive dividends plus wage incomes, which because of enhanced productivity and better market linkages, are much higher than their current incomes. With a minimum of 100% increase in farm productivity envisaged under this program (in the least productive areas, a 200 % or even 300% increase is not unlikely), the farmer can expect a minimum of a 60-70 % increase in income, with the balance going towards infrastructure, salaries for MVOAC professional managers, and food and/or financial support for the administrators and providers of the Vedic Procedures. This model has multiple benefits: land can be rotated without over-farming it, which a tiny landholder cannot do on his own, infrastructure such as roads and water and produce storage systems can be built, which again small landholders cannot afford, and environmental rotation measures can be adopted which would otherwise be untenable. This would also allow the land and management procedures to conform to the required international organic certification requirements for conservation and organic management. A private management firm such as MVOAC, backed by knowledge and high respectability, which sets up farming co-operatives and gets them running, could help catalyze the rapid growth of farming co-operatives throughout the target country. Once individual farmers everywhere witness the huge benefits that come from co-operativised farming, they will be willing to take part in our program to increase their own wealth, and to support creating a better quality of life in their country. Although there are co-ops already in existence in the developing nations, there are very few practicing sustainable, organic farming. This will be where Maharishi Vedic Organic Cooperatives will distinguish themselves. Taking the farming program as a whole, and considering all its production and environmental effects, and the high quality of the food produced, Maharishi Vedic Organic Cooperatives will be able to produce more and better crops for less expense, and thus attract framers away from the conventional, life damaging farming methods.
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