Joseph G. Knapp

Inducted: 1979

Joseph G. Knapp dedicated his long and productive professional life to cooperatives. He first studied co-ops in 1925, when he did field studies of California’s agricultural cooperatives. While teaching at North Carolina State College for five years, he helped local cooperatives with problems of organization and operation. He then went on to head the purchasing section of the Cooperative Research and Service Division of the Farm Credit Administration, and subsequently was division associate chief. When it became the Farmer Cooperative Services of the USDA, he became its administrator, serving until his retirement in 1966. He authored hundreds of articles and publications and many books, including ‘Great American Cooperators’, ‘The Rise of American Cooperative Enterprise: 1620 – 1920’, and ‘The Advance of Cooperative Enterprise: 1920 –1945.’ He was first recipient of the Ellerbe Merit Award from The Cooperative Foundation in 1975.