Agricultural Cooperatives in Transition Countries

The farming structure in transition countries has shifted from dominance of large corporate farms to family smallholdings. Smallholders everywhere experience difficulties with access to market services, including sale of products, purchase of inputs, and acquisition of machinery; they suffer from credit shortages and have limited access to information and advisory services. The barriers to market access prevent smallholders from fully exploiting their inherent productivity advantages. Best-practice world experience highlights farmers' service cooperatives, created by grassroots users, as the most effective way of improving the market access of small farmers. Service cooperatives also help smallholders overcome market failures, when private business entrepreneurs are unwilling to provide services in areas that they judge unprofitable or unfairly exploit users through monopolistic practices. These difficulties and market failures are prominent in transition countries and scholars accordingly expected rapid development of agricultural service cooperatives in response to smallholder needs. The present volume explores the gaps between expectations and reality.