Research Trends in Agricultural Marketing Cooperatives: A Bibliometric Review

Abstract

In the last decade, agricultural cooperatives have become increasingly popular in the food industry. This paper aims to shed light on the extensive literature on agricultural cooperatives. Design/Methodology/Approach: In conducting this review, we applied the bibliometric review method. Initially, we retrieved 1249 bibliometric data from the Scopus database, which were reduced to 364 documents after applying the PRISMA guidelines. The data were filtered using the following keywords: “agricultural marketing cooperatives”, “agricultural marketing societies”, “performance”, “value chains”, and “supply chains”. Findings: According to our findings, the present research is primarily focused on smallholders, sustainability, and supply chain management topics. We found that current research lacks an understanding of why agricultural cooperatives fail in terms of finances, investments, and implementation of strategies. We conclude that agricultural marketing cooperatives in their current state and legal form might not be flexible enough to compete in markets due to global and sustainability concerns. Finally, we provide a practical roadmap for researchers, investors, policymakers, and non-profits. Limitations: The main limitation of our review is that it contains only studies found in Scopus and examines only the English language literature. Originality/Value: Bibliometric analyses focused on agriculture cooperatives are scarce, and this paper provides a broader perspective of the existing literature. Moreover, it identifies research gaps and current trends in the field while providing a detailed description of how agricultural cooperative research has evolved over time.

The Impact of Agricultural Socialized Service on Grain Production: Evidence from Rural China

“…In all aspects of agricultural production, other things being equal, the proportion of grain grown by farmers who use socialized services in plowing, sowing, fertilizing, medicating, irrigation, and harvesting increases by 42.5%, 29.5%, 29.3%, 24.1%, 31.6%, and 53.5%, respectively, compared to those who do not use socialized services. In the mechanism analysis part, based on the existing studies [41][42][43], this study additionally discovered that agricultural socialization services have the potential to greatly influence the grain cultivation of farmers through the promotion of connected transfer in, inhibition of connected transfer out in order to capitalize on plot concentration, and encouragement of the utilization of agricultural machinery to enhance production efficiency. These results are consistent with H2-H4.…”

Viability, Government Support and the Service Function of Farmer Professional Cooperatives—Evidence from 487 Cooperatives in 13 Cities in Heilongjiang, China

“…In order to ensure the supply of food in the context of the decreasing number of farmers, cooperatives can pool small farmers' land resources, use mechanical equipment for large-scale operations, and improve resource utilization efficiency. At the same time, in the demand-oriented market, the operation of cooperatives has also changed [9], which can better cope with the problem of production and the supply and marketing of agricultural products.…”