New Forms of Agricultural Co-operation: Key Features, Viability, and Prospects

The article provides a conceptual overview oflIew forms of agricultural cooperation and elaborates on their viability and prospects particularly within the Australian and New Zealand context. It is considered that these new forms of co-operation result from the collective responses to the recent structural changes in agriculture, such as an increasing concentration in production and processing. and shifts in control over agricultural production decisions from the farm-level to off-farm firms. To retain control and to take advantage of economic opportunities, farmers are increasingly turning to collective power and actions and new institutional co-operative arrangements, both formal and informal. This article outlines in more detail, some of these arrangements such as the new generation co-operative model (NCC), as well as some specific forms of producer-consumer collective actions, such as farmers' markets and CSA operations (community supported agriculture). Since agricultural co-operatives are facing a changing global food system, the article will also elaborate the most recent trends of internationalisation of agricultural cooperatives and the forms adopted by some co-operatives in Australasia.