Governance describes a firm´s system of decision‐making, direction and control. Over the last decades agricultural cooperatives in Europe have been pursuing innovations in internal governance structures. As a response to changing market environments, cooperatives adjust the size and composition of boards, the labour division between supervision and management and the representation of members‐owners. Changes in the cooperatives´ internal governance mechanism are motivated by the need to enhance market orientation, attract professional managers, strengthen member commitment, and reinforce entrepreneurship. We present data on innovations in the internal governance mechanisms of a sample of 500 agricultural cooperatives in the EU. In addition, we present theoretical explanations for these innovations, and we discuss their implications for member control and manager accountability, as well as for performance and further development of the cooperatives.

Farmers’ organizations (FOs), such as associations, cooperatives, self-help and women’s groups, are common in developing countries and provide services that are widely viewed as contributing to income and productivity for small-scale producers. Here, we conducted a scoping review of the literature on FO services and their impacts on small-scale producers in sub-Saharan Africa and India. Most reviewed studies (57%) reported positive FO impacts on farmer income, but much fewer reported positive impacts on crop yield (19%) and production quality (20%). Environmental benefits, such as resilience-building and improved water quality and quantity were documented in 24% of the studies. Our analysis indicates that having access to markets through information, infrastructure, and logistical support at the centre of FO design could help integrate FOs into policy. Natural resource management should also be more widely incorporated in the services provided by FOs to mitigate risks associated with environmental degradation and climate change. Finally, farmers who are already marginalized because of poor education, land access, social status and market accessibility may require additional support systems to improve their capacities, skills and resources before they are able to benefit from FO membership.

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Milk is an important agricultural product that has traditionally been processed by cooperatives. Across member states of the EU-27, however, large variation exists between the national market shares of cooperatives in dairy processing. Theoretical models suggest that a strong cooperative sector secures competitive regional prices for agricultural produce. Empirical studies which seek to quantify these effects are rare though. We use panel data to study the impact of cooperative strengthmeasured by market shares -on national farm gate milk prices in the EU-27 for the period from 2000 to 2010. Our results reveal a positive effect of cooperative market share on price that is relatively large and robust over different specifications of the econometric model. We conclude that dairy cooperatives have a pro-competitive effect and that exemptions for cooperatives from antitrust regulation may be justified.

ii iii SummaryIn recent past two decades India is experiencing a dramatic growth in urban population. The latest censes (2011) specifies that there is 32 per cent of the population lives in cities which makes a growth of 5 per cent in comparison with 2001 census. Apart from the demographic growth, it is the spatial growth which directed various disciplines', among them political, historical, sociological and agricultural sciences attention to the dynamic transformation processes taking place in the urban periphery.These dramatic changes underpin that due to spatial expansion of cities and town various transformations happen in urban peripheries to a large extent.These transformations in urban peripheries are driven largely on the one hand towards land grabbing building industry providing additional space for real estate, on the other a growing demand for fresh fruits and vegetables for feeding the increasing population. The growing pressure on natural resources like land and water puts also pressure on the economic spaces of peri-urban agriculture forcing them to develop strategies which enable them to react on these challenges. The dissertation describes this brief wider social setting where the main objective of the dissertation provide ramification of the relationship between urbanization and the pattern of change taking place in the peri-urban farming.In addition the dissertation has put forth arguments about understanding the sustainability by various agricultural actors in the peri-urban agriculture that could prompt agricultural communities in these areas to collectively seek more sustainable development and recoup certain social innovations in the process of achieving sustainability. The individual research papers in this dissertation exclusively shed light on various perspectives connected to the establishment of sustainable peri-urban agriculture.