Using Cooperatives to Enhance Competitive Advantage

Jul 25, 2025

By Steven Richards

A cooperative is owned and controlled by its members. It can therefore negotiate on behalf of its members to increase competitive advantage by achieving efficient operational scale, negotiating better product and input prices, reducing production risk, obtaining better insurance, engaging the next generation, and handling the administrative red tape burden for its members.

Marketing

One of the most common uses of a cooperative is to aggregate farm products and collectively market these products on an efficient scale. Many markets, such as wholesale and institutional markets, are not accessible to smaller, individual growers. Value-added processing is another layer of risk management that newer, next-generation cooperatives employ to access markets and increase economic value to their members. PYCO Industries is a good example: a cottonseed oil mill with over 50 cotton gin members.

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Video: Democratizing Gene Editing - Pairwise’s Vision for the Future of Agriculture

Pairwise has built its business around an idea that runs counter to how many companies approach innovation: make transformative technology easier to access.

In this Seed World interview, CEO Tom Adams discusses why broader access to gene editing could speed crop improvement, expand innovation opportunities and help agriculture address emerging challenges. He explains why Pairwise believes no single company can solve all of agriculture's problems alone—and why making advanced breeding technologies available to more organizations could accelerate progress across the industry.

The conversation explores how consumer trust influences technology adoption, why innovations like pitless cherries and seedless blackberries matter beyond convenience, and how future crop improvements could help address labor shortages, automation, harvest efficiency and other production challenges. Adams also shares his perspective on what the industry may be underestimating about the next wave of gene editing innovation.

Watch the full interview to hear why Pairwise believes agriculture is approaching an important inflection point for gene editing, and why the pace of innovation over the next decade could surprise the industry.

Topics Covered:

o Democratizing agricultural innovation

o Consumer trust and technology adoption

o The business case for sharing innovation

o Expanding innovation beyond major crops

o Next-generation breeding technologies