Assessing the Effectiveness of Farm Supply Cooperatives: A Comparison of Farmer and Manager Viewpoints

This paper reports the results of a survey of attitudes of commercial farmers and supply cooperative managers about agricultural supply cooperatives. Cooperative managers and farmers frequently made significantly different responses to questionnaire statements. With a few expectations, farm size and farmer age did not appear to influence perceptions about supply cooperatives. Whether a farmer was a cooperative member was important in some cases. Lower prices in lieu of easy credit and patronage refunds were found to be acceptable to farmers, but not at the expense of good service. Managers placed great importance on member loyalty to the supply cooperative without regard to price consideration