Everything Co-op With Vernon Oakes

2019 Co-op Hall of Fame Inductee, Richard Stammer is interviewed on Everything Co-op, a nationally broadcast radio show. Stammer is the former President and CEO of Agri-Mark Inc. and Cabot Creamery Cooperative. Vernon and Richard discuss his career, and the many contributions he has made to the cooperative movement. A leader in the U.S. dairy industry for half a century, Richard Stammer helped New England dairy cooperatives sidestep bankruptcy with a daring merger that today generates sales approaching $1 billion, and worked to shape public policies to protect the economic interests of the nation's diary farmers. Richard began his career as a tenured professor of Agricultural Economics at Rutgers University, but left to put theory into practice at a pivotal moment in the dairy industry. The 1980s and 90s were tough times for the milk industry in New England; family farms were shuttering and dairy co-ops were collapsing. With no value-added products, Agri-Mark was hit hard. At first, it seemed like Cabot