Key people Jeff Stroburg, CEO Type of business Agricultural Cooperative | Founded 1923 Area served Southern United States | |
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Industry Agricultural Supply and Retail Number of locations Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, Kentucky, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Alabama Products farm supplies, petroleum & bulk fuel, grass & vegetable seed, fertilizer, power equipment, pet & wild animal supplies, livestock supplies and feed, horse supplies and feed, fencing equipment, apparel and more Services seed, feed, fertilizer, crop protectants, precision ag, livestock health, equine health, farm supplies, farm fuels Headquarters Richmond, Virginia, United States Subsidiaries Southern States Holdings, Inc. | ||
Farm safety awareness john deere financial southern states cooperative
Southern States Cooperative is an American farmer-owned agricultural supply cooperative in the United States. Southern States Cooperative supplies small, medium & large commercial farmers with livestock & animal feed, pasture seed, vegetable seed, farm fertilizers, farm supplies, bulk fuel and crop services, including information & products to grow better crops. They also supply homeowners with information & products for their lawn, garden, hobby farm and home.
Contents
Celebrating 90 years with southern states cooperative
Company History
Southern States Cooperative was founded in 1923 as the Virginia Seed Service by 150 farmers in Richmond, Virginia to help develop seeds, it expanded to distribution of feed in 1925, fertilizer in 1926 and farm supplies and petroleum shortly after.
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, Virginia, to take steps to remedy the situation. 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. In the early 1930s, VSS was looking beyond Virginia and changed its name to Southern States Cooperative. Soon other states were served including 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.
In 1978, Southern States moved its headquarters to Henrico County.
Acquisitions and Subsidiaries
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.
Research
The cooperative tests and adapts seed varieties to different regions. In 1948 it began a hybrid-corn research program, and in 1954 began to set up a series of research farms.
It is a member of the national seed-breeding research organization FFR Cooperative, a research group specializing in forage seed-breeding, owned by a number of cooperatives, founded in 1960. It is also a member of Cooperative Research Farms (CRF), a research group specializing in animal nutrition.