STRUCTURAL CHANGE IN THE DAIRY COOPERATIVE SECTOR, 1992-2000

Industrial Organization, Livestock Production/Industries,

Southern Dairy Farmers' Evaluation of Milk Handlers

Southern dairy farmers' perception of their cooperative's or proprietary handler's performance, level of satisfaction with the milk handler, and reasons for staying with the handler, or for shifting handlers, were evaluated. The data were from a 1989 mail survey of Southern dairy farmers. The dairy farmers' differing evaluations of their milk handlers depended on the type of handler they dealt with, geographic location, and/or the characteristics of the farm and farmer. Generally, dairy farmers were concerned about price, deductions, and assessments. The price farmers received appeared to be a significant factor affecting farmers' satisfaction level. There appeared to be a tradeoff between price and deductions versus service, and market and payment assurance. Dairy farmers wanted cooperatives to provide an assured market for members' milk.Cooperative, milk handler, proprietary handler, assured market, price, S-217, Agribusiness,

How to improve our understanding of group decision making with the help of artificial intelligence

Within science we primarily obtain knowledge of a specific field by reading the published results of theoretical and empirical studies. It is argued that this approach may lead to a biased and incomplete perspective of a research area. It is proposed to also use methods from Artificial Intelligence to elicit, model and use the knowledge of experts. It is expected that especially their heuristic knowledge is relevant for problem solving and consultancy applications. An illustrative example concludes the paper

INDIVIDUAL HEURISTICS AND THE DYNAMICS OF COOPERATION IN LARGE GROUPS

This article describes computer simulations in which pairs of ''individuals'' in large groups played a prisoners' dilemma game. The individual's choice to cooperate or not was determined by 1 of 3 simple heuristics: tit-for-tat; win-stay, lose-change; or win-cooperate, lose-defect. Wins and losses were determined through the comparison of a play's outcome with the average outcome of the individual's neighbors. The results revealed qualitative differences between small and large groups. Furthermore, the prevalence of cooperation in the population depended in predictable ways on the heuristic used, the values of the payoff matrix, and the details of the social comparison process that framed the outcomes as wins or losses