[nradov]

Co-ops are great, but they don't really work for any business that requires a large capital investment. Like farming might seem simple, but if you want to make it cost effective then you need a lot of expensive equipment like a $800K combine harvester. Where does that capital come from? It's tough to find members who can contribute that much money to join.

[michaelt]

There's actually something called a "Machinery Cooperative" where several farmers club together to buy a combine harvester which they all share.

Of course, it operates at a different level to the co-op kiliantics describes; you can't have 10 farmers share a $800K machine unless your mean member has $80K cash on hand.

[bluGill]

Except that all farmers in an area need the combine on the same day. Which is why a lot of farmers don't own a combine - they hire a crew that comes with not only a combine, but also semi trucks, grain carts and all the other special equipment needed for harvest. Then when your farm is done they move to a new area (north in North America) where the harvest is ready. However at the end of the day someone needs to pay the multi-millions of dollars that the harvest operation is.

[raptor99]

You know, I was going to poke fun of you at first, but I've had the thought and notion several times that it would be so nice if I could share equipment with other people physically close to me (neighborhood, area, etc). Most of the equipment that I do have or own sits unused most of the time, and I feel it would be nice for others to benefit from it as well at a reduced cost since we could all share it somehow.

[ninalanyon]

There are a number of large co-ops in Europe. For instance the Co-operative Wholesale Society in the UK which has over three thousand supermarkets, funeral directors, etc. It had a turnover of 11 billion GBP in 2023.

The Arla dairy business in Denmark and Sweden is also a co-op. It is the fifth biggest dairy company in the world.

[kiliantics]

It's definitely an under-explored area of business but I don't see why there couldn't be a scalable "co-operative" form of banking that could serve this need. Something like a credit union, which distributes the risk of investment among members without some added overhead that goes to investors. As pointed out in another reply, there are European countries with more established co-operative practices in agriculture and other larger industries and I believe this is partially due to sources of capital that are made available by the state for projects like this, so it is a form of co-operative/socialist investment.