In ““My Invented Country”” Isabel Allende writes of her people, ““We Chileans still feel our bond with the soil…. Our most important newspaper, El Mercurio, publishes a weekly agricultural supplement that informs the public in general of the latest insignificant pest found on the potatoes or about the best forage for improving milk production. Its readers, who are planted in asphalt and concrete, read it voraciously, even though they have never seen a live cow”.”

It is no wonder that one of Chile’s most successful cooperatives started with the creation of those cows and, everyday, their 600 employees work to make the animals stronger and healthier. In 1968 Cooprinsem launched into business with the objective of bringing artificial insemination technology and services to the cattle and farmers of Osorno, Chile. For generations, the people of this province raised livestock and crops in the wide, flat pastures that lay before the magnificent Volcano Osorno. However, Cooprinsem has labored to transform traditional, low yield farms into competitive, productive agricultural businesses.

They succeeded in revolutionizing insemination practices in Osorno. In the intervening years, however, Cooprinsem has also grown up with its cattle. They now provide services and products for the entire life span of a cow—and for the production and processing of its milk. The coop has expanded throughout Southern Chile and provides, among other things, sanitation products, feed, laboratory services, irrigation equipment and agricultural software. They lead the country in the distribution of milking equipment and semen and have become the largest veterinary pharmacy in Chile.

Cooprinsem just got a new logo: the bull and the volcano. It is a simple image, but it is elemental to the history, focus and future of the cooperative. Clearly the cow has come to stay in Chile and Cooprinsem works towards increasing the explosive virility of both these beasts and the country’’s economy. As Allende points to the connection between citizen and soil, Cooprinsem feels a deep bond with their land, their people and the vast, immovable strength of both.