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An agricultural cooperative, also known as a farmers' co-op, is a producer cooperative in which farmers pool their resources in certain areas of activities. A broad typology of agricultural cooperatives distinguishes between agricultural service cooperatives, which provide various services to their individually-farming members, and agricultural production cooperatives in which production resources (land, machinery) are pooled and members farm jointly.Cobia, David, editor, ''Cooperatives in Agriculture'', Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ (1989), p. 50. Agricultural production cooperatives are relatively rare in the world. They include collective farms in former socialist countries, the
kibbutzim A kibbutz ( / , ; : kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1910, was Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, i ...
in Israel, collectively-governed community shared agriculture, Longo Maï co-operatives in Costa Rica, France, and some other countries, CPAs in Cuba, and Nicaraguan production cooperatives. The default meaning of "agricultural cooperative" in English is usually an agricultural service cooperative, the numerically dominant form in the world. There are two primary types of agricultural service cooperatives: supply cooperatives and marketing cooperatives. Supply cooperatives supply their members with inputs for agricultural production, including seeds,
fertilizers A fertilizer or fertiliser is any material of natural or synthetic origin that is applied to soil or to plant tissues to supply plant nutrition, plant nutrients. Fertilizers may be distinct from Liming (soil), liming materials or other non- ...
,
fuel A fuel is any material that can be made to react with other substances so that it releases energy as thermal energy or to be used for work (physics), work. The concept was originally applied solely to those materials capable of releasing chem ...
, and machinery services. Marketing cooperatives are established by farmers to undertake transportation, packaging, pricing, distribution, sales and promotion of farm products (both crop and livestock). Farmers also widely rely on credit cooperatives as a source of financing for both working capital and investments. Notable examples of agricultural cooperatives include
Dairy Farmers Of America Dairy Farmers of America Inc. (DFA) is a national milk marketing cooperative in the United States. DFA markets members' raw milk and sells milk and derivative products (dairy products, food components, ingredients and shelf-stable dairy product ...
, the largest dairy company in the US, Amul, the largest food product marketing organization in India and Zen-Noah, a federation of agricultural cooperatives that handles 70% of the sales of chemical fertilizers in Japan.


Purpose

Cooperatives as a form of business organization are distinct from the more common investor-owned firms (IOFs). Both are organized as
corporations A corporation or body corporate is an individual or a group of people, such as an association or company, that has been authorized by the State (polity), state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law as ...
, but IOFs pursue
profit maximization In economics, profit maximization is the short run or long run process by which a firm may determine the price, input and output levels that will lead to the highest possible total profit (or just profit in short). In neoclassical economics, ...
objectives, whereas cooperatives strive to maximize the benefits they generate for their members (which usually involves zero-profit operation). Agricultural cooperatives are therefore created in situations where farmers cannot obtain essential services from IOFs (because the provision of these services is judged to be unprofitable by the IOFs), or when IOFs provide the services at disadvantageous terms to the farmers (i.e., the services are available, but the profit-motivated prices are too high for the farmers). The former situations are characterized in economic theory as
market failure In neoclassical economics, market failure is a situation in which the allocation of goods and services by a free market is not Pareto efficient, often leading to a net loss of economic value.Paul Krugman and Robin Wells Krugman, Robin Wells (2006 ...
or missing services motive. The latter drive the creation of cooperatives as a competitive yardstick or as a means of allowing farmers to build countervailing
market power In economics, market power refers to the ability of a theory of the firm, firm to influence the price at which it sells a product or service by manipulating either the supply or demand of the product or service to increase economic profit. In othe ...
to oppose the IOFs. The concept of competitive yardstick implies that farmers, faced with an unsatisfactory performance by IOFs, may form a cooperative firm whose purpose is to force the IOFs, through competition, to improve their service to farmers.John M. Staatz, "Farmers' incentives to take collective action via cooperatives: A transaction-cost approach, " in: ''Cooperative Theory: New Approaches'', ed. J.S. Royer, Washington, DC: USDA ACS Service Report 18 (July 1987), pp. 87–107. A practical motivation for the creation of agricultural cooperatives is related to the ability of farmers to pool production and/or resources. In many situations within agriculture, it is simply too expensive for farmers to manufacture products or undertake a service. Cooperatives provide a method for farmers to join in an 'association', through which a group of farmers can acquire a better outcome, typically financial, than by going alone. This approach is aligned to the concept of
economies of scale In microeconomics, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation, and are typically measured by the amount of Productivity, output produced per unit of cost (production cost). A decrease in ...
and can also be related as a form of economic
synergy Synergy is an interaction or cooperation giving rise to a whole that is greater than the simple sum of its parts (i.e., a non-linear addition of force, energy, or effect). The term ''synergy'' comes from the Attic Greek word συνεργία ' f ...
, where "two or more agents working together to produce a result not obtainable by any of the agents independently". While it may seem reasonable to conclude that the larger the cooperative the better, this is not necessarily true. Cooperatives exist across a broad membership base, with some cooperatives having fewer than 20 members while others can have over 10,000. While economic benefits are a strong driver for forming cooperatives, they are not the only consideration. Similar economic advantages can also be achieved through other organizational forms, such as investor-owned firms (IOFs). A key advantage of the cooperative model for farmers is that they retain governance over the association, ensuring that ownership and control remain with the members. This structure means that profit distributions—whether through dividends or patronage rebates—are shared exclusively among farmer-members, rather than external shareholders as in IOFs. Agricultural cooperatives play a critical role in rural socio-economic development, food security, and poverty alleviation, particularly in regions where agriculture is the main source of employment and income. These cooperatives provide smallholder farmers with access to resources, education, tools, and markets that might otherwise be inaccessible. By organizing into producer cooperatives, farmers can also increase their resilience to economic and environmental shocks. These organizations help build the capacity of smallholders to adapt to challenges in ways that reduce vulnerability and enhance long-term sustainability. Some studies suggest that membership in a producer organization is more strongly correlated with improved farm output or income than other interventions, such as technical training, certification, or credit alone. In agriculture, there are broadly four types of cooperatives: a manufacturing/marketing cooperative, a purchasing/supply cooperative, a machinery pool, and a
credit union A credit union is a member-owned nonprofit organization, nonprofit cooperative financial institution. They may offer financial services equivalent to those of commercial banks, such as share accounts (savings accounts), share draft accounts (che ...
. * * Manufacturing/marketing cooperative: A farm does not always have the means of transportation necessary for delivering its produce to the market, or else the small volume of its production may put it in an unfavorable negotiating position with respect to intermediaries and wholesalers; a cooperative will act as an integrator, collecting the output from members, sometimes undertaking manufacturing, and delivering it in large aggregated quantities downstream through the marketing channels. * Purchasing/supply cooperative: The same considerations of smallness of scale that motivate the creation of marketing cooperatives explain the establishment of purchasing/supply cooperatives that aggregate purchases, storage, and distribution of farm inputs for their members. By taking advantage of volume discounts and utilizing other economies of scale, supply cooperatives bring down the cost of the inputs that the members purchase from the cooperative compared with direct purchases from commercial suppliers. * Machinery pool: A family farm may be too small to justify the purchase of expensive farm machinery, which may be only used irregularly, say, only during harvest; instead, local farmers may get together to form a machinery pool that purchases the necessary equipment for all the members to use jointly. Machinery pools are regarded as a type of specialized purchasing/supply cooperative. * Credit Union: Farmers, especially in developing countries, can be charged relatively high interest rates by commercial banks, or credit may not even be available for farmers to access. When providing loans, these banks are often mindful of high
transaction costs In economics, a transaction cost is a cost incurred when making an economic trade when participating in a market. The idea that transactions form the basis of economic thinking was introduced by the institutional economist John R. Commons in 1 ...
on small loans, or may refuse credit altogether due to lack of collateral – something very acute in developing countries. To provide a source of credit, farmers can group together funds that can be loaned out to members. Alternatively, the credit union can raise loans at better rates from commercial banks due to the cooperative having a larger associative size than an individual farmer. Often members of a credit union will provide mutual or peer-pressure guarantees for repayment of loans. In some instances, manufacturing/marketing cooperatives may have credit unions as part of their broader business. Such an approach allows farmers to have a more direct access to critical farm inputs, such as seeds and implements. The loans for these inputs are repaid when the farmer sends produce to the manufacturing/marketing cooperative.


Origins and history

The first agricultural cooperatives were created in Europe in the seventeenth century in the
Military Frontier The Military Frontier (; sh-Cyrl-Latn, Војна крајина, Vojna krajina, sh-Cyrl-Latn, Војна граница, Vojna granica, label=none; ; ) was a borderland of the Habsburg monarchy and later the Austrian and Austro-Hungari ...
, where the wives and children of the
border guard A border guard of a country is a national security agency that ensures border security. Some of the national border guard agencies also perform coast guard (as in Germany, Italy or Ukraine) and rescue service duties. Name and uniform In diff ...
s lived together in organized agricultural cooperatives next to a
funfair A fair (archaic: faire or fayre) is a gathering of people for a variety of entertainment or commercial activities. Fairs are typically temporary with scheduled times lasting from an afternoon to several weeks. Fairs showcase a wide range of go ...
and a
public bath Public baths originated when most people in population centers did not have access to private bathing facilities. Though termed "public", they have often been restricted according to gender, religious affiliation, personal membership, and other cr ...
. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in certain areas of Greece, back then, under Ottoman rule, a particular form of cooperative organization was developed. Networks of adjacent rural communities were organized as a local production system designed to produce specific agricultural or craft products which were then destined for international markets. Derived from the Byzantine guilds, they were enabling better control of the production and tax collection by the Ottoman administration. One of the first civil cooperatives, was the Rochdale Society, formed in 1844 in Rochdale, England. While it was a society of textile workers, and thus not an agriculture cooperative in the strict sense, it also aimed to rent land, to be cultivated by members "who may be out of employment or whose labour may be badly remunerated". The Society’s first enterprise was a retail store, but it very soon also established a corn mill. The first civil agricultural cooperatives were created also in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. They spread later to North America and the other continents. They have become one of the tools of agricultural development in emerging countries. Farmers also cooperated to form mutual farm insurance societies. Also related are rural
credit union A credit union is a member-owned nonprofit organization, nonprofit cooperative financial institution. They may offer financial services equivalent to those of commercial banks, such as share accounts (savings accounts), share draft accounts (che ...
s. They were created in the same periods, with the initial purpose of offering farm loans. Some became universal banks such as
Crédit Agricole Crédit Agricole Group (), sometimes called La banque verte (, , due to its historical ties to farming), is a French international banking group and the world's largest cooperative financial institution. It is the second largest bank in France, ...
or
Rabobank Rabobank (; full name: ''Coöperatieve Rabobank U.A.'') is a Dutch multinational banking and financial services company headquartered in Utrecht, Netherlands. The group comprises 89 local Dutch Rabobanks (2019), a central organisation (Raboban ...
.


Supply cooperatives

Agricultural supply cooperatives aggregate purchases, storage, and distribution of farm inputs for their members. By taking advantage of volume discounts and utilizing other economies of scale, supply cooperatives bring down the cost of the inputs that the members purchase from the cooperative compared with direct purchases from commercial suppliers. Supply cooperatives provide inputs required for agricultural production, including seeds, fertilizers, chemicals, fuel, and farm machinery. Some supply cooperatives operate machinery pools that provide mechanical field services (e.g., plowing, harvesting) to their members.


Examples


Australia

* Co-operative Bulk Handling Limited * Westralian Farmers Co-operative Limited


Canada

* Farmers' Storehouse Company *
United Farmers of Alberta The United Farmers of Alberta (UFA) is an association of Alberta farmers that has served different roles in its 100-year history – as a lobby group, a successful political party, and as a farm-supply retail chain. As a political party, it forme ...
* Farmers of North America


France

* Agrial (
Normandy Normandy (; or ) is a geographical and cultural region in northwestern Europe, roughly coextensive with the historical Duchy of Normandy. Normandy comprises Normandy (administrative region), mainland Normandy (a part of France) and insular N ...
) * Terrena (
Pays de la Loire Pays de la Loire (; but can also mean 'Lower Loire') is one of the eighteen administrative regions of France, located on the country's Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast. It was created in the 1950s to serve as a zone of influence for its capital an ...
) * Vivescia


Israel

* Granot central cooperative


Japan

* Japan Agricultural Cooperatives


Korea (South)

* National Agricultural Cooperative Federation


Turkey

* The Agricultural Credit Cooperatives of Turkey


Ukraine

*
Ukrainian cooperative movement Ukrainian may refer or relate to: * Ukraine, a country in Eastern Europe * Ukrainians, an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine * Demographics of Ukraine * Ukrainian culture, composed of the material and spiritual values of the Ukrainian peopl ...


United States

* Landisville Produce Co-op, established 1914 * Rockingham Cooperative, established in 1921 * MFA Incorporated * Darigold *
Organic Valley Organic Valley (OV) is an organic food brand and independent agricultural cooperative, cooperative of Organic farming, organic farmers based in La Farge, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1988 and it is the largest farmer owned organic colle ...
* National Council of Farmer Cooperatives * Southern States Cooperative * Farmers Cooperative Association, Inc.;
Frederick, Maryland Frederick is a city in, and the county seat of, Frederick County, Maryland, United States. Frederick's population was 78,171 people as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of municipalities in Maryland, second-largest ...
* Ocean Spray (cooperative) *
Land O'Lakes Land O'Lakes, Inc. is an American member-owned agricultural cooperative based in the Minneapolis-St. Paul suburb of Arden Hills, Minnesota, United States, focusing on the dairy industry. The cooperative has 1,959 direct producer-members, 751 ...
* Michigan Sugar * Sunkist * Wilco stores (Oregon) * Grange Cooperative * Saline Valley Farm Cooperative, established 1931


Netherlands

* Avebe * Agrico * Agrifirm


Marketing cooperatives

Agricultural marketing Agricultural marketing covers the services involved in moving an agricultural product from the farm to the consumer. These services involve the planning, organizing, directing and handling of agricultural produce in such a way as to satisfy farm ...
cooperatives are
cooperative A cooperative (also known as co-operative, coöperative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomy, autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned a ...
businesses owned by farmers, to undertake transformation, packaging, distribution, and marketing of farm products (both crop and livestock.)


New Zealand

New Zealand has a strong history of agricultural cooperatives, dating back to the late 19th century. The first was the small Otago Peninsula Co-operative Cheese Factory Co. Ltd, started in 1871 at Highcliff on the
Otago Otago (, ; ) is a regions of New Zealand, region of New Zealand located in the southern half of the South Island and administered by the Otago Regional Council. It has an area of approximately , making it the country's second largest local go ...
Peninsula. With active support by the New Zealand government, and small cooperatives being suitable in isolated areas, cooperatives quickly began to dominate the industry. By 1905, dairy cooperatives were the main organisational structure in the industry. In the 1920s–'30s, there were around 500 co-operative dairy companies compared to less than 70 that were privately owned. However, after
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, with the advent of improved transportation, processing technologies and energy systems, a trend to merge dairy cooperatives occurred. By the late 1990s, there were two major cooperatives: the
Waikato The Waikato () is a region of the upper North Island of New Zealand. It covers the Waikato District, Waipā District, Matamata-Piako District, South Waikato District and Hamilton City, as well as Hauraki, Coromandel Peninsula, the nort ...
-based New Zealand Dairy Group and the
Taranaki Taranaki is a regions of New Zealand, region in the west of New Zealand's North Island. It is named after its main geographical feature, the stratovolcano Mount Taranaki, Taranaki Maunga, formerly known as Mount Egmont. The main centre is the ...
-based Kiwi Co-operative Dairies. In 2001 these two cooperatives, together with the New Zealand Dairy Board, merged to form Fonterra. This mega-merger was supported by the New Zealand Government as part of broader dairy industry deregulation, which allowed other companies to directly export dairy products. Two smaller cooperatives did not join Fonterra, preferring to remain independent – the
Morrinsville Morrinsville () is a provincial town in the Waikato region of New Zealand's North Island. Morrinsville is a service town for the local dairy industry; the area surrounding the town has the highest concentration of dairy cattle in New Zealand. ...
-based Tatua Dairy Company and Westland Milk Products on the West Coast of the South Island. The other main agricultural co-operatives in New Zealand are in the meat and fertiliser industries. The
meat industry The meat industry are the people and companies engaged in modern industrialized livestock agriculture for the production, packing, preservation and marketing of meat (in contrast to dairy products, wool, etc.). In economics, the meat industry is ...
, which has struggled at times, has proposed various mergers similar to the creation of Fonterra; however, these have failed to gain the necessary member support.


Canada

In Canada, the most important cooperatives of this kind were the wheat pools. These farmer-owned cooperatives bought and transported grain throughout Western Canada. They replaced the earlier privately and often foreign-owned grain buyers and came to dominate the market in the post-war period. By the 1990s, most had demutualized (privatized), and several mergers occurred. Now all the former wheat pools are part of the Viterra corporation. Former wheat pools include: * Alberta Wheat Pool * Manitoba Pool Elevators *
Saskatchewan Wheat Pool The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool was a grain handling, agri-food processing and marketing company based in Regina, Saskatchewan. The Pool created a network of marketing alliances in North America and internationally which made it the largest agricul ...
* United Grain Growers Other agricultural marketing cooperatives in Canada include: * Organic Meadow Cooperative (organic dairy) * Gay Lea Foods Co-operative Limited (dairy) * Agropur


Ecuador

The Amazon region of Ecuador is known for producing world-renowned cacao beans. In the Napo region 850 Kichwa families have come together with help from American biologist, Judy Logback, to form an agricultural marketing cooperatives, Kallari Association. This cooperative has helped increase benefits for the families involved as well as to protect and defend their Kichwa culture and the Amazon rainforest.


India

In India, there are networks of cooperatives at the local, regional, state and national levels that assist in agricultural marketing. The commodities that are mostly handled are food grains, jute, cotton, sugar, milk and nuts Dairy farming based on the Anand Pattern, with a single marketing cooperative, is India's largest self-sustaining industry and its largest rural employment provider. Successful implementation of the Anand model has made India the world's largest milk producer. Here small, marginal farmers with a couple or so heads of milch cattle queue up twice daily to pour milk from their small containers into the village union collection points. The milk after processing at the district unions is then marketed by the state cooperative federation nationally under the Amul brand name, India's largest food brand. With the Anand pattern three-fourths of the price paid by the mainly urban consumers goes into the hands of millions of small dairy farmers, who are the owners of the brand and the cooperative. The cooperative hires professionals for their expertise and skills and uses hi-tech research labs and modern processing plants & transport cold-chains, to ensure quality of their produce and value-add to the milk. Production of
sugar Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose Glucose is a sugar with the Chemical formula#Molecular formula, molecul ...
from sugarcane mostly takes place at cooperative sugar cane mills owned by local farmers. The shareholders include all farmers, small and large, supplying
sugarcane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of tall, Perennial plant, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar Sugar industry, production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fib ...
to the mill. Over the last sixty years, the local sugar mills have played a crucial part in encouraging rural political participation and as a stepping stone for aspiring politicians. This is particularly true in the state of
Maharashtra Maharashtra () is a state in the western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. It is bordered by the Arabian Sea to the west, the Indian states of Karnataka and Goa to the south, Telangana to th ...
where a large number of politicians belonging to the Congress party or NCP had ties to sugar cooperatives from their respective local areas. Mismanagement and manipulation of the cooperative principles have made a number of these operations inefficient.


Israel

* Tnuva Central Cooperative for the Marketing of Agricultural Produce in Israel Ltd.


Netherlands

* Coöperatieve Nederlandse Bloembollencentrale (CNB) * Coforta * Royal Cosun * ZON * FloraHolland * FrieslandCampina


Ukraine

* Ukrainian cooperative movements


United States

* American Legend Cooperative (
mink Mink are dark-colored, semiaquatic, carnivorous mammals of the genera ''Neogale'' and '' Mustela'' and part of the family Mustelidae, which also includes weasels, otters, and ferrets. There are two extant species referred to as "mink": the A ...
fur A fur is a soft, thick growth of hair that covers the skin of almost all mammals. It consists of a combination of oily guard hair on top and thick underfur beneath. The guard hair keeps moisture from reaching the skin; the underfur acts as an ...
) "Blackglama" brand *
Blue Diamond Growers Blue Diamond Growers is an agricultural cooperative and agricultural marketing organization, marketing organization that specializes in California almonds. Founded in 1910 as the California Almond Growers' Exchange, the organization claims to be ...
(
almond The almond (''Prunus amygdalus'', Synonym (taxonomy)#Botany, syn. ''Prunus dulcis'') is a species of tree from the genus ''Prunus''. Along with the peach, it is classified in the subgenus ''Amygdalus'', distinguished from the other subgenera ...
s) *
Cabot Creamery The Cabot Creamery Cooperative is an American dairy agricultural marketing cooperative owned by Agri-Mark. The cooperative has a plant in Cabot, Vermont, but its administrative headquarters is in Waitsfield, Vermont. History The original ...
(
dairy A dairy is a place where milk is stored and where butter, cheese, and other dairy products are made, or a place where those products are sold. It may be a room, a building, or a larger establishment. In the United States, the word may also des ...
) * Darigold * Diamond of California ( nuts), formerly a cooperative * Dairylea Cooperative Inc. (Dairy), formerly Dairymen's League *
Dairy Farmers of America Dairy Farmers of America Inc. (DFA) is a national milk marketing cooperative in the United States. DFA markets members' raw milk and sells milk and derivative products (dairy products, food components, ingredients and shelf-stable dairy product ...
* Edible Garden * Florida's Natural Growers (
citrus ''Citrus'' is a genus of flowering trees and shrubs in the family Rutaceae. Plants in the genus produce citrus fruits, including important crops such as oranges, mandarins, lemons, grapefruits, pomelos, and limes. ''Citrus'' is nativ ...
fruit) * Humboldt Creamery (dairy), formerly a cooperative *
Land O'Lakes Land O'Lakes, Inc. is an American member-owned agricultural cooperative based in the Minneapolis-St. Paul suburb of Arden Hills, Minnesota, United States, focusing on the dairy industry. The cooperative has 1,959 direct producer-members, 751 ...
(
dairy A dairy is a place where milk is stored and where butter, cheese, and other dairy products are made, or a place where those products are sold. It may be a room, a building, or a larger establishment. In the United States, the word may also des ...
and farm supply) * Maine's Own Organic Milk Company (dairy) * Michigan Milk Producers Association (dairy) *
Michigan Sugar Company Michigan Sugar Company is an agricultural cooperative, based in Bay City, Michigan, that specializes in the processing of beet sugar. Founded in 1906, Michigan Sugar sells beet sugar under the brand names ''Big Chief'' and ''Pioneer.'' Michiga ...
(sugar beets) * Ocean Spray ( cranberries and citrus fruit) *
Organic Valley Organic Valley (OV) is an organic food brand and independent agricultural cooperative, cooperative of Organic farming, organic farmers based in La Farge, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1988 and it is the largest farmer owned organic colle ...
(organic milk, cheese, eggs, soy, butter, yogurt, snack items) * Riceland Foods (
rice Rice is a cereal grain and in its Domestication, domesticated form is the staple food of over half of the world's population, particularly in Asia and Africa. Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice)—or, much l ...
,
soybean The soybean, soy bean, or soya bean (''Glycine max'') is a species of legume native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean. Soy is a staple crop, the world's most grown legume, and an important animal feed. Soy is a key source o ...
s,
corn Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout Poaceae, grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples of Mexico, indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago ...
and
wheat Wheat is a group of wild and crop domestication, domesticated Poaceae, grasses of the genus ''Triticum'' (). They are Agriculture, cultivated for their cereal grains, which are staple foods around the world. Well-known Taxonomy of wheat, whe ...
) * Snokist Growers (pears, apples, cherries) *
Sunkist Growers, Incorporated Sunkist Growers, Incorporated, branded as Sunkist in 1909, is an American citrus growers' non-stock membership cooperative composed of over 1,000 members from California and Arizona headquartered in Valencia, California. Through 31 offices in ...
(citrus fruit) * Sun-Maid (
raisin A raisin is a Dried fruit, dried grape. Raisins are produced in many regions of the world and may be eaten raw or used in cooking, baking, and brewing. In the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia and South Afri ...
s) * Sunsweet Growers Incorporated (
dried fruit Dried fruit is fruit from which the majority of the original water content has been removed prior to cooking or being eaten on its own. Drying may occur either naturally, by sun, through the use of industrial dehydrators, or by freeze drying. ...
, especially
prune A prune is a dried plum, most commonly from the European plum (''Prunus domestica'') tree. Not all plum species or varieties can be dried into prunes. Use of the term ''prune'' for fresh plums is obsolete except when applied to varieties of ...
s) * Tillamook County Creamery Association (dairy) * Lone Star Milk Producers (dairy) * United Egg Producers * Welch Foods Inc. ( Welch's)


Mexico

* Zapatista coffee cooperatives


See also

* Winemaking cooperative * Zvi Galor, Israeli expert on cooperatives


References


Further reading

* McBride, Glynn (2014), Agricultural Cooperatives: Their Why and Their How * Derr, Jascha (2013)
''The cooperative movement of Brazil and South Africa''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Agricultural Cooperative
Cooperative A cooperative (also known as co-operative, coöperative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomy, autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned a ...
Agricultural production Rural community development
Cooperative A cooperative (also known as co-operative, coöperative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomy, autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned a ...