Cooperative Marketing of Vegetables

Farmer-owned cooperatives not only serve as a means of providing services and information to producers, but they can provide a mechanism for returning the earnings from marketing activities to producers and farm economies. Given the importance of member participation and member-management relations for the success of a cooperative, a survey was conducted in different four fruit and vegetable cooperatives of Chitwan during January-February, 2009 to assess how members perceive farmer-owned cooperatives in terms of the need for, role, and performance of a cooperative. Cooperative members' beliefs, goals, concerns, and attitudes toward their cooperative organizations were examined. Altogether eighty members from four cooperatives were selected. In addition to target member producers, forty non-member producers in the study area were targeted to incorporate perceptions who might see cooperatives differently. Problem of inputs, training and unorganized market was of higher concern for the members. Lack of information and unavailability of cooperatives to sell whole produce were found as most prominent reasons of non-members for not joining the cooperatives.