The empirical literature on farmer cooperatives is now fast emerging and developing in the areas of performance, ownership and governance, finance, and member attitude. We discuss 56 peer‐reviewed publications to illustrate the main findings and conclusions while outlining challenges and opportunities for future research. Generally, cooperative membership is found to positively impact price, yield, input adoption, income, and other indicators of member performance, yet there is growing evidence of an uneven distribution of benefits for small and large producers. In terms of structure, evidence of a causal relationship of ownership and governance to performance has been elusive, yet there are now many findings of inherent equity and long‐term debt constraints, often in the context of consolidation to drive scale and scope economies. Further inefficiency is observed to be driven by increased heterogeneity in member attitudes and objectives, in particular in terms of commitment and participation. Thus, overall, empirical work portrays farmer cooperatives as flawed and complex business organizations which nonetheless have a strong positive impact on its members. While applied research may progress in various directions, a general improvement in empirical methodologies is needed to allow robust analysis of mixed objectives in dynamic environments.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effects of member size and external incentives (food safety certification and target market) on cooperative’s product quality, using data collected from 135 apple producing cooperatives in China. Design/methodology/approach – Given that different indicator variables were used to measure apple quality, the authors employed a principle component analysis method to reduce the measurement dimension. An ordinary least square regression was employed to analyse the effects of member size and selective incentives of agricultural cooperatives on product quality. Findings – The empirical results show that member size and cooperative’s product quality bear an inverse “U-shape” relationship, and food safety certification and target market variables tend to positively and significantly influence cooperative’s product quality. In particular, the cooperatives with more food safety certificates and targeting supermarkets and export enterprises are more likely to supply high-quality products. Originality/value – This study provides the first attempt to measure apple quality and investigate the factors that influence cooperative’s product quality.

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Organic Valley is the largest organic cooperative in North America, one of two national buyers of organic milk, and one of two national organic dairy manufacturers. The cooperative's official name is Cooperative of Regional Organic Producers, and it is organized as a new generation cooperative, owned and controlled by patron‐members who also transact with the business. Organic Valley has a unique policy of sustainable and stable producer pay‐pricing for organic milk in the emerging organic dairy industry. This case presents challenges faced by the leadership of Organic Valley cooperative to maintain a stable and economically sustainable pay price for its farmer members. This case also introduces students to a new organizational form of cooperative, including its governance, the industry, and the market structure in which the cooperative operates. The objective of this case study is to improve student understanding of economic concepts such as theories of the imperfect market, demand and supply, and organizational design. The case also aims to help students improve their critical thinking and analytical skills by exploring the possibility of maintaining a unique sustainable and stable pricing method through the data provided. Additionally, the story introduces the economic role that organic dairy operation might play for small and medium‐size dairy farmers as they attempt to maintain an economically sustainable family farm lifestyle.

Following implementation of the Agricultural Cooperative Law in July 2007, the number of cooperatives increased dramatically, as did the related research in China. The objective of this paper is to describe articles written in Chinese and published in the top six Chinese Agricultural Economics journals between 2007 and 2017, identify research trends and issues, generate observations, and provide insights for future research. A secondary objective is to introduce to the non-Chinese speaking world a literature written by Chinese scholars as they view the emergence of this new organizational form in the agricultural sector. Our interest is to illustrate Chinese cooperative literature within two general approaches: articles which address agricultural cooperatives' inter-firm coordination issues and articles which study the mechanism design which we call intra-firm coordination. A total of 443 articles were reviewed, 163 dealing with inter-firm coordination and 280 with intra-firm coordination. The inter-firm coordination articles focused on firm coordination mechanisms and formal institutions such as cooperative law, accounting rules, financial markets, and government support. Intra-firm coordination articles focused on organization design, cooperative governance, relationships between members and