In our area, we try to farm together as a whole, all the different apple growers together, and we have found that by combining our resources and creating an infrastructure for the industry, we're better off than we are competing individually against each other. When we're competing in such a huge market anyway, we're better to band together and try to get ahead that way.
In some of the niche markets it does work, with goats and cheese, but in the large scale of things, the costs are too great to do an up-to-date, current processing facility on your own, when you can go together with others and spread out your costs.