Farmward Cooperative and New Vision Co-op announced via their boards of directors the two co-ops will launch a unification study. The announcement said the scheduled completion of the study is before harvest 2023.
Farmward has 11 locations and 1,610 farmer members in southwest and west central Minnesota. New Vision has 19 locations and 2,200 member-owners in southwest Minnesota, northwest Iowa, and eastern South Dakota.
“With so many external forces impacting agriculture, farmer-owned cooperatives have to continue to find ways to better serve the ever-changing needs of our producers and employees,” said Farmward board chair, Dave Kadlec who farms near Olivia, Minnesota. “As we launch a study to determine if a unification vote is the right move, we will be asking employees and member-owners for their questions and input as to what they want from their cooperative today and in the long term in order to best position our equity holders for the future.
The co-ops aim to answer three questions in this effort:
- How do we take care of employees today and in the future?
- How do we prepare ourselves to serve the producer of the future?
- Are we better together than separately?
“We are excited to have the opportunity to dig deeper into our two similar cooperatives and look at the operations, processes, and employee cultures to find if there are ways to work together to help us both become stronger together,” said New Vision board chair, Chad Wieneke who farms near Adrian, Minnesota. “We know this process is going to raise many questions so we’ve created a website where member-owners can submit questions in addition to reaching out to their board. Our number one goal is to learn more about each other’s team and operations and most importantly, listen to each other.”
