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Foulks named to Kansas Co-op Hall of Fame
Published 6/16/2009 in Local News
By RACHAEL GRAY
Harley Foulks, Garden City, was inducted into the Kansas Cooperative Hall of Fame recently during the Kansas Farmers Service Association and Kansas Co-op Council's annual dinner in Hutchinson.
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Courtesy photo — Harley Foulks, Garden City, was inducted into the Kansas Cooperative Hall of Fame.
The inductees are selected by a committee of cooperative leaders from across Kansas and the KCC Board of Directors. The council recognizes Kansans who have been "instrumental in developing and spreading the cooperative philosophy on the state, national or international levels."
Considering those who have been inducted, Foulks said the award meant quite a lot to him.
"There have been some great Kansans who have gone in there before me," he said. He named Kansas Sen. Arthur Capper from the Capper-Volstead Act. The act, also known as the Cooperative Farming Act, established a farm bloc in Kansas that enabled farmers to lawfully unite to collectively market their products in order to fight high prices and market monopolies. He also mentioned Herb Clutter, who was inducted for his contribution to the development of agriculture in western Kansas.
Foulks served as the general manager of the Garden City Co-op from 1972 to 1991. He said he became interested in the co-op business because it was the type of business that returned profits to the patrons instead of the stock holders.
"I liked the idea of bringing money back from regional cooperatives like refineries and grain elevators to Finney County as opposed to that money going to investors in some other corporation," he said.
As general manager of the Garden City Co-op, Foulks helped establish better communication. He formed a young farmer member relations group that met monthly and toured different facilities. The co-op directors would share ideas with the committee, and the advisory board would offer recommendations, he said. After the farmers gained experience, they became good candidates to become board members.
During his career, Foulks served as president of the KCC, was a member of the National Cooperative Business Associaton, was chairman of the Promark Advisory Committee, was a committee member of the Co-op Employee Retirement Plan, and a board member of Golden Plains Credit Union. He served as president of the Garden City Area Chamber of Commerce and president of the Garden City Lions Club.
Foulks served on the Beef Empire Days committee, at first keeping books and later as show chairman and president. He said he designed the logo still in use today. In 1987, Foulks traveled to El Salvador to help establish a co-op community. He went with the U.S. Agency for International Development. He said during that time in El Salvador, the farmland consisted of huge plantations. He said the government then took them over and distributed them to the people to use as farmland.
After retirement in 1992, Foulks spent five weeks in Slovakia to consult members of a former collective farm in their efforts to convert to a cooperative operation. The next year, he visited Kaliningrad, Russia, to help farmers obtain private land and operate it cooperatively.
Though Foulks is retired, he remains close to agriculture. He lives on a farm east of Garden City with his wife, Mary Ellen.
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