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Cooperatives and the Commodity Political Agenda: A Political Economy Approach
Author(s) -
Goddard Ellen,
Boxall Peter,
Lerohl Mel
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
canadian journal of agricultural economics/revue canadienne d'agroeconomie
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.505
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1744-7976
pISSN - 0008-3976
DOI - 10.1111/j.1744-7976.2002.tb00352.x
Subject(s) - commodity , competition (biology) , politics , product (mathematics) , process (computing) , business , function (biology) , agribusiness , market economy , economics , agriculture , industrial organization , political science , ecology , geometry , mathematics , evolutionary biology , computer science , law , biology , operating system
Historically, major agricultural cooperatives in Canada have been intimately involved in commodity policy issues. Large cooperatives were created because farmers were upset about the perceived lack of competition in buying farm inputs or selling farm outputs. Often, the resulting cooperative was the organization farmers saw as the logical organization to represent their view of commodity policy or competition policy. As cooperatives grew and diversified, the ability to represent their members coherently across policy issues was hampered. For processing cooperatives in the supply‐managed sector, the requirement that the cooperative be the political arm of industry, process product, and provide maximum returns to producer members made for a complicated objective function. This paper focuses on the twin objectives of providing efficient member services and performing political lobbying in a public choice framework. The results are illustrated by the recent history of a supply‐managed further‐processing cooperative and a diversified grain cooperative.