Word: co-op
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...growers at Corona, the success of Sunkist's new lemonade concentrate meant more vitamins for the growth of the world's largest food cooperative. Since 1893, when a few growers took the name "Southern California Fruit Exchange" and joined forces to market their crop, the co-op has blossomed into a huge pyramid with a base of 14,000 growers and an apex of hired managers who run the business. Not many of Sunkist's growers own more than 15 acres apiece. But together they market about 75% of all the citrus fruit in California and Arizona...
...typical grower at last week's dedication was Paul R. Daggs, a spare, twinkling-eyed man who lives in Upland, Calif, and has 25 acres of lemons and oranges a few miles outside town. After Daggs sprays, irrigates and fertilizes his fruits, the co-op will pick, sort, grade and market about 16,000 boxes of oranges and lemons for him. They should bring approximately $150,000 on the market and, after all expenses, leave Daggs with a $15,000 profit for his year's work. Daggs sometimes complains about the heavy pyramid over his head...
...more oranges, but California and Arizona have the lemon business practically to themselves. Sunkist grows 82% of the nation's total, is converting poorer-grade orange orchards to lemons by grafting lemon branches on full-grown orange trees. Though oranges are still the biggest part (72%) of the co-op's business, Armstrong's lemonade business takes all the farmers grow. "And the nicest part of the whole thing," says Armstrong, "is that these sales haven't hurt sales of fresh lemons. They've been growing...
Suburbs & Smog. Nevertheless, the co-op has its troubles. Steadily growing industrial suburbs have cut some 30,000 acres off the California citrus growers' orchards since World War II, and California's oranges have been getting smaller over the past few years. Sunkist's researchers are at work on the orange mystery, trying to discover if it is the smog, the lack of rain, or some unnamed malady that stunts the oranges. But Sunkist's 14,000 fruit growers are sure that Armstrong and his researchers will lick these problems, as they have others...
Like most merchants, the managers of the Southern States Cooperative, one of the three top U.S. farm supply coops, are well aware of the decline in old-fashioned retail salesmanship. Last week, at their annual meeting in Richmond, the co-op's 60 district field managers, who run 125 retail stores, conducted their own shopping experiment. Each one started on an hour's shopping tour to see if clerks could persuade him to buy $5 worth of goods. They bought little. Out of their $300 total, they spent only $103.79. Twenty-nine shoppers spent less than $1 each...