Agricultural Cooperatives and Unions of Cooperatives in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Opportunities for Improvement

Given the breakup of Yugoslavia and the ensuing war, there has been massive changes in the agricultural structure in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In particular, the remade cooperatives and the unions of cooperatives that are supposed to serve them are struggling. This paper examines the needs of the agricultural cooperatives to be more successful and identifies what support will likely come from the unions of cooperatives and what must come from other sources. Data was obtained in three ways: 1) questionnaires to a large group of cooperatives, 2) focus groups with a smaller number of cooperatives, and 3) personal interviews with union of cooperatives representatives. The findings indicated that the unions of cooperatives are working on institutional issues such as registering and auditing cooperatives, and resolving land ownership conflicts. However, since the cooperatives are not familiar with the market economy, they also need help in business management, marketing, legal services, and organizational effectiveness. It is not likely that the unions will be able to help the cooperatives with these issues. New partners such as the Ministry of Agriculture, colleges of agriculture, or non-governmental organizations should be tasked with providing this educational support.Bosnia and Herzegovina, agricultural cooperatives, union of agricultural cooperatives, agricultural development, Agribusiness,

NON-AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVES IN THE UNITED STATES: ROLES, DIFFICULTIES, AND PROSPECTS

A wide variety of cooperatives outside the agricultural sector have been playing an important role in the nation's rural and urban areas by providing housing for the elderly and poor, affordable health care, child care, and education. These firms may constitute both business models that reduce the cost of operating a business and effective community development models that forge cooperation among local government and communities. However, limited information is available about how these non-agricultural cooperatives operate, how they were formed, or what are their problems or difficulties as non-traditional cooperatives. This study of 162 randomly selected non-agricultural cooperatives across the United States attempts to answer these questions and finds that even this small sample of non-agricultural cooperatives played an important role in various sectors of the nation's economy (e.g., retail), serving slightly less than half a million members in 1996. Most of these non-agricultural cooperatives had been in business for over 30 years, showing their tenacity in today's highly competitive world. Most of these cooperatives were professionally managed. While raising equity was the most difficult problem during their formation stage, competition in their major market (trade) area was the most difficult current problem. The problem of balancing the interests of cooperative members was a major problem for these non-agricultural cooperatives. According to these non-agricultural cooperatives, training and education of the cooperative board of directors, management, and employees is an important factor for cooperative success.non-agricultural cooperatives, formation, operation, factors affecting success, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Sources of Financial Stress in Agricultural Cooperatives

Financial stress in agricultural cooperatives may be due to a combination of three factors: inadequate profitability, excessive debt, or high interest rates. This paper uses an analytical technique to determine the relative degree of financial stress in agricultural cooperatives attributable to each factor. Roughly 30 percent of agricultural cooperatives in our sample suffered financial stress from 1987 through 1992. The analysis indicates that the greatest portion of financial stress, 54 percent, originated from low earnings. High interest rates accounted for roughly 24 percent of the financial stress while leverage accounts for the remaining 22 percent. The results also indicate that smaller cooperatives are more than twice as likely to face financial stress than larger cooperatives. Small cooperatives are more likely to face profitability problems whereas large cooperatives are more likely to face debt and interest rate problems.Agribusiness, Agricultural Finance,

The Financial Performance of North Dakota Agricultural Cooperatives

Agricultural input supply and marketing cooperatives are an important part of North Dakota's agricultural economy. North Dakota agricultural cooperatives purchase and merchandise feed and food grains, maintain inventories of farm inputs, and provide specialized services. In 2004, 224 farm supply, agricultural processing, and grain handling cooperatives were present in the state (Coon and Leistritz 2005). These include independent local cooperatives and those affiliated with federated cooperatives. The objective of this research is to assess the financial performance of North Dakota agricultural input supply and grain handling cooperatives between 2002 and 2006. In section one, the characteristics of a cooperative business and how this relates to the financial benefits a cooperative provides are described. In section two, cooperative businesses features affecting financial performance are described. In section three, data and methods used in this analysis are presented. In section four, the results are presented and discussed. Section five presents concluding remarks. The results of this analysis suggest no statistical relationship between North Dakota agricultural cooperative profitability and business size. There were consistent differences in investment behavior between relatively profitable and less profitable agricultural input supply and grain handling cooperatives in North Dakota between 2002 and 2006.Agribusiness,

AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVES AND RISK MANAGEMENT:IMPACT ON FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE

Agricultural cooperatives, like all agribusinesses, operate in an inherently risky environment. Many risk management tools exist, but agricultural cooperatives have been slow to adopt sophisticated risk management practices. Using simulation methods, this paper presents insight into how both traditional and innovative risk management practices effect the distribution of key financial variables for agricultural cooperatives.Agribusiness,

POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS FOR SHARED-SERVICES COOPERATIVES IN NORTH DAKOTA

The principal goal of shared-services cooperatives is to capture savings through lower administrative costs, quantity purchasing discounts, sharing fixed costs, and assured levels of business with vendors and suppliers. Although the idea of cooperation is not new in North Dakota, the question raised here is whether there is potential applications for non-agricultural shared-services cooperatives that provide services that are absent or inadequate in rural communities in the state. It is concluded that there is potential application for shared-services cooperatives in both public and private sectors in North Dakota based on opportunities to share fixed costs and to capitalize on pecuniary economies of size.shared-services cooperatives, non-agricultural cooperatives, North Dakota, Agribusiness,

Manager Power, Member Behavior and Capital Structure: Portuguese Douro Wine Cooperatives

Leverage is one of the most important financial factors to the survival and viability of agricultural cooperatives (e.g., wine cooperatives) during a period of intense competition. Leverage is influenced both by the behavior of managers and cooperative members. An empirical study for the Douro Demarcated Region Wine Cooperatives (DDRWC) supports the hypothesis that managers have a positive influence in the determination of the equity/total assets ratio and that individualistic behavior of cooperative members has a negative influence in the value of this ratio. This paper suggests that there may be value in reconsidering cooperatives in the context of a so-called Mediterranean model.Agribusiness, Agricultural cooperatives, governance, behavior and leverage,

Incentives to Efficient Investment Decisions in Agricultural Cooperatives

Recent studies have questioned the competitiveness of agricultural cooperatives in an industrialized food system, based on empirical results and economic theory. New organizational institutions have been proposed to overcome the cooperative main weaknesses (the so called new generation cooperatives). In this paper, we provide a simple model based on a financial approach to address the issue of cooperative competitiveness and to assess the investment efficiency of both traditional and new generation cooperatives. The main conclusions of the analysis are: i) cooperatives (both traditional and new generation ones) may have incentive to adopt projects that do not maximize the Net Present Value of the firm ii) the institutions of new generation cooperatives are not sufficient to ensure net present value maximization, even though they address some of the main concerns of traditional cooperatives iii) traditional cooperatives may have a competitive advantage in businesses that require the aggregation of a large number of farmers.agricultural cooperatives, investment efficiency, Agribusiness, Agricultural Finance, Q13, Q14,

Construct validation of supply chain management in cooperative

This study attempts to analyze construct in supply chain and to determine which construct contribute to performance of agricultural cooperatives in Malaysia. The primary data is collected via questionnaire from top level management of agricultural cooperatives using 5-item Likert scale. Factor analysis and structural equations modeling were used to analyze the data. Findings show that cooperatives places importance on quality and technology, logistic, supplier and governance. As a whole, supply chain is significance in determining performance. However, governance alone is not significant in determining performance. The empirical result could be used to improve further studies in supply chain management.Agricultural cooperatives; supply chain management model