To the editor,

I so enjoyed reading the article “Growing to nowhere. Why I’m voting ‘no’ on co-op merger,” (issue Nov. 6) by George Naylor, in Farm News.

Everything Naylor said is so true and I completely share his feelings.

I have been farming all my life.

I started out using a small local coop, Bradgate Cooperative Elevator. They were a strong coop.

Over a period of time, several of the local elevators around got into financial trouble – Rolfe, Gilmore City, Pioneer – and Bradgate ended up buying each of them and saving them.

Since then, it has just never stopped. Now what has become known as Pro Cooperative has 14 or 15 locations – even as a patron I am not for sure how many anymore.

As they grew bigger with each merger, we as patrons were always told that the co-op would have more buying power and better prices, and they would provide better service.

I am absolutely so disappointed as this has proven to be not true.

And now this has become completely out of the control of the patron farmer.

I appreciate Mr. Naylor’s views and thank him for his insight on this issue.

As a fellow farmer, I agree we need to do what we can to curtail any further agriculture cooperative mergers.

Gary Naeve,

Humboldt