Agricultural cooperatives have played an important role in the Asian rural landscape for decades, and has become an integral part of its social structure. Cooperatives have contributed greatly to the development of modern national and systematized agricultural production-base, helped enhance self-sufficiency of major staple foods, and strengthened farmers’ household economy by facilitating market access and competitiveness, adapting their operations to agricultural technological innovations and encouraging democratic decision-making processes, leadership development and education.
However, at the dawn of the 21st century, new issues and forces have been influencing the external and internal environment of agricultural cooperatives worldwide. Some of these forces include: the restructuring of the agricultural sector such as demographic changes and diversification of member-farmers; highly-advanced technological innovations; large-scale marketing and changing consumer preferences; shifting international agricultural trade regime; and globalization of the financial market. All these factors have left many agricultural cooperatives, particularly in the Asian region, groping to find more efficient business models in an increasingly harsh economy, and leaving resource-poor small-scale farmers with no option but to realign their economic activities and meager resources to external signals.
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