I would say they're not disadvantaged. I can't think of how they would be. The large co-ops, of course, are large organizations that have lots of capability, so we set them aside because they can access funds from any financial institution. The medium-sized, independent cooperatives that serve communities also have been very successful, and they've got quite a history. Again, I think we'd treat them as we would any other corporation.
When it comes to the smaller co-ops, the ones we've talked about, like the cattle-feeder ones, those are really where we take a group of individuals that could be quite small in number and, as Mike mentioned, we ask them to put forward a bit of an account so we have a loan-loss pool, and that takes some of the risk away from them and from us, and then they come together as a group. That's different from if they were a partnership or an incorporated group of individuals.
We sometimes fail to remember that whether it's an individual or a group in a corporate structure, those individuals typically will sign a guarantee for the lending that this small company or that proprietor takes on. If the co-op members are also willing to share in the risk, then that's really the thing. How do we, as a financial institution, mitigate the risk? That's where we ask them to participate. So they don't have to sign a guarantee, and that's why we set up a pool. They may not want to guarantee someone else's loan, if they're an individual farmer, so that's how we got around that to create a risk profile that we think is going to be sustainable.