Agricultural Cooperatives and Contract Price Competitiveness

This study examines the price competitiveness of marketing and production contracts depending on whether contracts are with cooperatives or investorowned firms. A propensity score matching method is used to compare prices using contract data from a national farm-level survey. The results show that prices of agricultural contracts with cooperatives are not significantly different from those with investor-owned firms, which indicates that cooperatives are adhering to recommended business practices of offering market prices to their members