Essays on Agricultural Co-operatives; Governance Structure in Fruit and Vegetable Chains

Jos Bijman (1959) is senior researcher at the Agricultural Economics Research Institute (LEI), The Hague, The Netherlands. He studied political science at the University of Amsterdam. After his graduation in 1988 he worked two years as a researcher at the Department of International Relations and International Public Law, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Amsterdam. Next, he worked for one year as a teacher at the Faculty of Philosophy and Technical Social Sciences, Delft Technical University. In September 1991 he joined the LEI, where his research initially focused on technology assessment and socio-economic impacts of agricultural biotechnology. In recent years he has extended his expertise to internationalisation of agribusiness and the organisation of (international) agrifood chains. The author has written many reports and articles on the impact of agricultural biotechnology, recently in the (electronic) journals AgBioForum (www.agbioforum.org), Biotechnology and Development Monitor, International Journal of Biotechnology and Food Policy. Articles on internationalisation, co-operatives and the organisation of the agrifood chain have appeared in Dutch journals, such as Co?peratie, Spil, TSL, Maandschrift voor Accountancy en Bedrijfseconomie, and in English journals such as American Journal of Agricultural Economics, and the European Review of Agricultural Economics.

This thesis studies the efficiency of the marketing co-operative for carrying out transactions with farm products. A co-operative is a special type of governance structure, characterised by collective ownership and forward vertical integration. These characteristics influence investment decisions by farmers and other firms in the agrifood chain. As vertical co-ordination has become more important in agrifood markets, investments in production and marketing become co-specialised. The main question is whether the farmerowned co-operative induces optimal incentives for complementary investments in two (or more) stages of the chain. The empirical research focuses on the Dutch fruit and vegetable industry.