An analysis of cooperative payments as a reimbursement to dairy cooperatives for market-wide services

"'Never one thing and seldom one person can make for a success. It takes a number of them merging into one perfect whole', and so has been the trend in agriculture in the recent past. The farmer, as an autonomous unit, faces prevailing chronic low prices and a "treadmill" turning ever faster. Thus the once individualistic family farm is projecting into a rather unique species of business organization, i.e., cooperatives. Ewell P. Roy defines a cooperative as... a business organized, capitalized, managed by, of and for, its member, patrons, furnishing and/ or marketing, at cost, goods and/or services to patrons. The key flavor to abstract from such a definition is the principle of patron ownership and service at cost. These will be key areas of concern later in this work. It is from such governing principles as mentioned above that the uniqueness of cooperative associations is perceived. Cooperatives differ from the traditional corporation in that they do not operate to maximize profit, but rather to maximize surplus to producers. This subject will be treated in more detail in Chapter II. In the case of dairy marketing cooperatives, with which this treatise is concerned, it must be born in mind that the cooperatives are simply extensions of the farm firms. Dairy marketing cooperatives are owned by their member users who are dairy farmers. The dairy farmers agree multi-laterally to coordinate the activity of markering. "They agree mutually to set up a plant and operate it jointly as an integral part of each of their individual firms." This thesis is particularly concerned with a problem or inequity peculiar to dairy marketing cooperatives, namely that many dairy cooperatives perform certain services or functions on a market wide scale but are burdened with the entire cost of such services. This is to say that many non-cooperative members receive benefit from cooperative services but pay no part of the expense for those services. It will be the purpose here to explore the above hypothesis, seek a workable remedy and consider the ultimate result the remedy brings about. Bearing in mind that dairy cooperatives are of primary concern, this work shall be initiated by a retrospective analysis of legislation affecting cooperatives."--Introduction.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Agricultural economics (MU)

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Missouri--Columbia

Year dc:date.issued

1970

Author dc:creator

• Glenn, Robert Freman

Statement dc:rights

• OpenAccess.

Language dc:language.iso

eng, English

DOI

https://doi.org/10.32469/10355/105510

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:mospace.umsystem.edu:10355/105510