Exploring the Performance of Agricultural Cooperative Society: A Study in Shekher Bazar, Khilgaon Area
- August 5, 2019
- Posted by: RSIS
- Category: Social Science
International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume III, Issue VII, July 2019 | ISSN 2454–6186
Nandita Saha Nitu
German University, Bangladesh
I. INTRODUCTION
Agricultural Cooperatives have always been of great significance to the Governments of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh and it is also included in the country’s National Agriculture Policy. (National Agriculture Policy, 1999). It has been stated here that the government will support the formation of agricultural cooperatives that are dedicated to help farmers in the process of producing and marketing their agricultural outputs to have more production, profit and equity.
Such agricultural cooperatives are formed to provide farmers with economic benefits that they cannot achieve working alone and thus leading to greater profit share for farmers (GF Ortmann & RP King, 2007). Some of the benefits are acquiring farming inputs and necessary information related to agricultural industry with efficiency to gain competitive advantage, having access to various kinds of financial assistance from the cooperatives, increasing bargaining power of farmers, gaining from emerging market opportunities, marketing their produce to customers with greater profit margins and accessing markets that otherwise could not be reached by the farmers easily.
But, agricultural cooperatives are not always correlated to success but also see frequent failures in developing countries because of the challenges the members face as being part of such organizational framework. (John O’Connor, 2004). The challenges may include shortage of capital in the agricultural cooperative that hampers the farmer’s access to finance from the organization, lack of efficiency in operational management leading to less support in the form of training, farming input and such, delays in receiving financial returns and profits for the produce the farmers sell through the cooperative, and finally the “politics” prevailing in the agricultural cooperatives related to election of farmers for achieving different designations.
