But I talked to Dr. Kirk Barrett, head of a cooperative research center run by the Meadowlands Commission and Rutgers University.
"We're all old folk and thankful to have young people come help us," said Hitoshi Suzuki, 57, and head of a cooperative of family farms that share equipment to reduce overhead costs.
"This year we've been hearing from quite a few of our funding sources that things are not looking so good for continued funding," said Glenn G. Patterson, the head of the cooperative water program for the Geological Survey, which pays for 65percentt of the network.
We soon heard back from the new head of the Montana Cooperative Development Center, a woman named Jan Brown who fairly vibrated with enthusiasm for the idea of a cooperative bookstore in downtown Billings.
After all, said the head of a cocoa cooperative here in Gagnoa, the northerners expelled from the village had labored for years to raise productive plantations.
Cristina Lescano, head of the El Ceibo Cooperative to which Cecilia belongs, cites the example of the government's new plastics recycling plant, which it inaugurated in December and whose management is outsourced to a private contractor.
"For us, the crop is our form of life; it allows us to put food on our tables and meet our needs," said Orlando Ibarra, the head of the local cooperative of coca farmers in the surrounding province of Nariño.
His father was a farmer and schoolteacher, the head of a farm-cooperative insurance company, an organizer of the township telephone company, and a town and county auditor.
Andreas Wieg, the head of the German association of cooperatives, noted that the number of cooperatives founded in recent years to save cultural institutions had increased, though his organization does not keep statistics.
They include the murder of the head of a fishermen's cooperative and hand grenade attacks on the city's Chinese consulate general.
