Evaluating Public Policy Support for Agricultural Cooperatives

Abstract

Creation of a sustainable agricultural sector involves boosting the cooperation activities as these contribute to the societal and economic development of the farms, farmers and rural societies. This paper contributes to the literature on the analysis of the drivers and obstacles of cooperation development in agriculture. The case of Lithuania is considered as the cooperation activities are lagging behind the European Union (EU) practice here. Specifically, analysis of the public support measures and the expert survey are carried out to analyse the effectiveness of the public policy measures as represented in the relevant legal acts. The experts involve policy makers, farmers’ organisations and academia, which are the major stakeholder groups in Lithuania. The results indicate the effectiveness of the measures linked to capacity building (in the sense of human capital) requires improvement, whereas those related to financial support and promotion of the farmers’ organisations are much better perceived. Thus, public support measures are available to promote cooperation in agriculture, yet the legal system of Lithuania still requires improvement in accommodating effective agricultural cooperatives.

The Efficacy of Agricultural Cooperatives Towards Enhancing Food Security in Rural Areas: Mbombela Local Municipality, Mpumalanga Province

“…Ibnu, Offermans, and Glasbergen (2018) attest that public support measures must be made available to enforce the policy and legal framework that supports weak agricultural cooperatives. The results indicate that the effectiveness of these measures is linked to capacity building (in the sense of human capital) which is required for improved financial support and promotion of farmer organizations (Ribašauskienė et al, 2019).…”

Farmers’ perception of agricultural cooperatives: the case of Şanlıurfa, Turkey

“…Nowadays, the need for organized structure has increased even more for both consumers and producers, as agricultural produce mostly pass through marketing channels and become international trade commodities (GTHB, 2013). Globally, many countries also apply tax reductions or exemptions to agricultural cooperatives, along with agricultural supports and grants, to increase organization in agricultural production (KOÇTÜRK, 2006;RIBAŠAUSKIENĖ et al, 2019;YU, 2019). For agricultural activities to be sustainable in the countryside, farmers should earn a satisfactory income (DOĞAN et al, 2020).…”

Comparative analysis of cooperative & non-cooperative farmers in Kosovo

“…Kosovo is on the way of EU (Gijselinckx & Bussels, 2014) resulting from history background. Countries such as Lithuania still require improvement to increase the effectiveness of agricultural cooperatives (Ribašauskienė et al, 2019). Their experiences show the potential of agricultural cooperatives in transforming traditional, subsistence agricultural farming to modern market-oriented business units, accelerating growth and addressing rural poverty can be used is case of Kosovo as well.…”