Today those have primarily faded into the back- ground, partly due to 1980s farm crisis and the mass exodus of small farms. But there are a few cooperatives in the seed sector that have a long- held success story: the French-owned Limagrain, parent to AgReliant Genetics, HM.Clause and many other entities/brands, and Land O’Lakes, the parent of Winfield Solutions. CHS and GROWMARK, parent to SEEDWAY, are two more. These businesses are unique in that the mem- ber-owners share in the risks, profits and losses. They often approach business with a long-term vision and aren’t as focused on ROI as publicly traded companies that have to worry about inves- tors and stock prices. The basic premise being that cooperatives can choose to implement business practices, such as sustainability initiatives, that might not be friendly to the bottom line in the short term. Today in the United States, there are approxi- mately 30,000 cooperatives delivering food, energy and water. Around the world, there are now more people working for cooperatives than there are working for multinationals. Cooperatives are an integral part of our current economic DNA. JANUARY 2019 SEEDWORLD.COM / 13 There’s a buzz right now about the “collaborative economy,” especially in entrepreneurial circles and in large cities or population centers where services can be shared. Think about Airbnb, Zipcar, Kickstarter and Bitcoin. These “sharing services” are disrupting busi- ness as we know it. To understand why, Shane Hughes, an environmen- talist and entrepreneur in the United Kingdom, says we need to look back at our economic evolution. In the beginning, we had Hunter-Gatherer eco- nomics, which consisted of tribe (organizational com- ponent) and land (economic component). Then we shifted completely to the agricultural revolution, with the economic components of labor and land and the organizational components of tribes and institutions (empires, governments, corporations). Enter the new economic driver of capital and that gave way to the Industrial Revolution with the new organizational component being international markets, Hughes explains. Finally, we are sitting on this cusp between these two worlds, the old industrial economy and the new information economy. That’s why we see these disruptions, Hughes says. The two components that the information or electronic economy brings are information (eco- nomic) and network (organization). “No longer is it survival of the fittest. It’s the companies that can collaborate the best that are far stronger..” — Shane Hughes