This article examines new agricultural cooperative organizational models from an ownership rights perspective. The article adopts a definition of ownership rights comprising both residual claim and control rights. We argue that new cooperative organizational models differ in how ownership rights are assigned to the economic agents (members, patrons, and investors) tied contractually to the firm. The article proposes a typology of discrete organizational models, in which the traditional cooperative structure and the investor-oriented firm are characterized as polar forms. The typology also includes five nontraditional models that cooperatives may adopt to ameliorate perceived financial constraints. Agricultural cooperatives have played an important economic role in market

http://web.missouri.edu/cookml/CV/RAE04.pdf

Understanding New Cooperative Models: An Ownership–Control Rights Typology

Reaching the rural poor through rural producer organizations? A study of agricultural marketing cooperatives in Ethiopia

This paper develops an organizational economics explanation for agricultural cooperatives by building upon the transaction cost theory of family farms. According to this theory, the importance of family farms in Western agriculture is a result of the low feasibility of hierarchical organization in agricultural production due to supervision and monitoring difficulties. This paper argues that the transaction cost-economizing effect of family farms has a price in the form of their limited ability to realize economies of scale and to develop market power comparable to that of their up- and downstream trading partners. The role of agricultural cooperatives is shown to help overcome these limitations in order to take advantage of the transaction-cost economizing properties of family farms. This explanation of agricultural cooperatives is sector-specific in the sense that it traces the benefits of cooperative organization back to the organizational attributes of agricultural production.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S1744137406000555

Why are cooperatives important in agriculture? An organizational economics perspective

http://directory.umm.ac.id/Data%20Elmu/jurnal/A/Agricultural%20Economics/Vol23.Issue3.Sept2000/1467.pdf

Agroindustrialization of the global agrifood economy: bridging development economics and agribusiness research.

Since 1980, agricultural economists have begun to reexamine fundamental issues in the theory of agricultural cooperation. These include the basic nature of farmer cooperation; the theoretical benefits and limits of cooperative enterprise; and the implications of these for cooperative members, managers, and public policy. Analysts have extended previous models of the cooperative as a type of business firm in order to analyze the impact of large cooperatives on market performance. They have also developed new models to analyze how cooperatives attempt to serve the divergent interests of different participants, such as managers and different classes of farmers. This report describes and evaluates recent theoretical developments, outlines remaining areas of conflict and gaps in the theory of agricultural cooperation, and discusses topics for future research. It concludes that one of the most promising areas for current research may be in testing hypothesis arising from current theoretical work.

Farmer Cooperative Theory: Recent Developments

COOPERATIVE THEORY: NEW APPROACHES, edited by Jeffrey S. Royer, Cooperative Management Division, Agricultural Cooperative Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. This report contains nine papers on cooperative theory relating to operations, market behavior, decisionmaking, finance, and other aspects of farmer cooperation. These papers were written as part of an ACS project intended to stimulate research and thinking on practical aspects of cooperative theory. This report does not represent an exhaustive theory of cooperatives, but presents new approaches to thinking on several topics. In addition to answering some questions, these papers ask others in an attempt to encourage more thought.

/pdf/cooperative-theory-new-approaches-3fg1xoph9o.pdf

George Ladd

Papers

Cooperative Theory: New Approaches