A type of business organization owned by its employees or customers. Agricultural cooperatives are collective projects initiated by local producers which aim to organize the implementation, collection, and transformation of the members’ production, and to ensure their reputation through collective actions. This means that they have to reconcile economic performance (marketing) with their social responsibilities towards their members (Filippi and Torre (2003) Int. J. Technol. Manage. 26, 2–4).

Agricultural cooperatives have been encouraged in the developing countries, where several farms pool resources to jointly purchase and use agricultural machinery; see anon. (2005) Rev. Int. Cooperation 98, 2 on cooperatives in Colombia. Rice and Lavoie (2005) Canad. Geogr. 49, 4 evaluate business cooperatives in Canadian economic growth.