History of Southern States
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| 1933:VSS becomes Southern States Cooperative. |
It was the "Roaring Twenties" -- the decade of the
Model T, the first trans-Atlantic flight and movies with sound.
President Calvin Coolidge declared that America’s business
was business. And Virginia’s farmers agreed.
At the time, farmers in Virginia were unable to buy seed guaranteed
to grow in the commonwealth. Despite scientific findings about
the correlation between the quality of seeds and the quality of
crops they produced, commercial seed handlers continued to sell
poor-quality seed. In 1923, about 150 farmers met in Richmond,
Va., to take steps that would deal with the situation. With $11,000
in capital, two employees and a second-hand typewriter, the company
that would become Southern States was born.
These 150 farmers, calling their cooperative Virginia Seed Service
(VSS), found that pooling their resources enabled them to procure
seeds better suited to Virginia’s growing conditions.
VSS began distributing feed in 1925, added a fertilizer service
in 1926 and started handling farm supplies and petroleum products
a few years later. Today the cooperative also gins cotton, procures
peanuts and markets fish
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| 1967:Southern States begins catalog service. |
In the early 1930s, VSS was looking beyond Virginia and changed
its name to Southern States Cooperative. Soon other states were
served—Delaware and Maryland in 1934, West Virginia in 1941,
Kentucky in 1945 and North Carolina in 1986.
Improvements in service also came quickly. In 1948, the cooperative
established its first hybrid corn research program. Six years later,
realizing it could no longer rely solely on college research, Southern
States helped establish a chain of feed testing and research farms
located across the country. And in 1960, Southern States and ten
other regional co-ops formed a national seed-breeding research
organization, FFR. Today, it remains the largest such operation
anywhere in the world.
In October 1998, Southern States continued its growth by acquiring
the wholesale and retail farm supply system of Gold Kist, Inc.
The acquisition effectively expanded the co-op’s territory
into the Southeastern part of the nation.
Two years later, Southern States purchased the wholesale business
of Agway consumer dealers and assumed all dealer marketing, development,
operations, distribution and logistics for this business. The acquisition
included a dealer network in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, New
York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania,
Maryland and Delaware, and a customer service center in Syracuse,
N.Y., as well as distribution facilities.
Today, as one of the nation's largest farmer cooperatives, Southern
States recognizes its past and looks forward to an exciting future. |
