AGRICULTURAL marketing cooperatives are feeling the impact of the j changing structure of the food market. The importance of traditional marketing channels is being reduced due to direct buying and other pro- curement practices used by major purchasers of food products, particularly large retail chains and groups of independent stores. In addition, market- ing cooperatives are being called upon to assume a new relationship to their producer members. Changes in technology and organizational struc- ture at the farm level have led to increasing emphasis on the producer cooperative as an instrumentality through which farmers can secure for themselves the advantages of new production and marketing techniques......

• Journal of Farm Economics, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Aug., 1960), pp. 555-566
• Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association