ther cooperative associations, the area in which the
local bank does business is not necessarily that of a community, it may
be a whole county where there are but few members, or there may be more
than one bank in a single community, but more commonly it is located at
a village center and tends to become a community institution.

Equally important for financing the current expenses of farming
operations and to make possible the orderly marketing of crops, is the
farmer's need for short-time credit. Our banking system has been
developed to meet the needs of the business world, and the period for
which loans can be made is too short to meet the needs of the farmer,
who often requires credit for six months to a year. In some ten states
legislation has been passed authorizing the formation of local credit
associations, which are really local cooperative banks, but the number
of credit associations established in rural communities has been
insignificant, thirty-three out of a total of thirty-six being in North
Carolina.[32] The tremendous losses suffered by American farmers during
1921 and their inability to secure sufficient credit from their local
banks has shown the necessity for better short-time credit facilities,
and bills are now before Congress which will enable the local land banks
to also handle short-time loans in cooperation with the Federal Reserve
Banks. If this is done, the amount of business done by these local banks
will be greatly increased and the cooperative principle in banking will
be greatly strengthened.

Cooperative selling associations have had a rapid growth in the United
States during the past decade. In 1919 the federal Bureau of Markets
estimated that agricultural products worth one and a half billions out
of a total of nearly nineteen billion dollars sold from farms were
marketed through cooperative associations, and the total has greatly
increased since then. The California Fruit Growers' Exchange, probably
the largest cooperative selling association, does a business of over
$50,000,000 annually and has one of the most efficient distributing
systems in the country.

At the present time some very ambitious programs of national
organizations for cooperative marketing are being started, such as the
United States Grain Growers, Inc., which is modeled after the successful
Canadian Grain Growers, Inc. One of the chief obstacles to all such
plans of effectively organizing the marketing of various a