During recent years, dramatic changes in the world food system have led to unprecedented competition between agribusiness firms. To compete in this environment, agricultural cooperatives should invest substantially in long-term activities such as R&D and advertisement. Co-operatives have a...

Motivation: While it appears the modern economy demands ever increasing amounts of differentiation, opportunities for grain producers to create and capture significant new sources of value remains elusive. Opportunities appear to loom large to help remove risk and improve quality in the grain...

The purpose of this paper it to theoretically investigate the potential benefits that arise from a cooperative selling a government subsidized area-yield contract (i.e., the Group Risk Plan). The indemnities in area-yield contracts are triggered by a geographically determined yield (e.g, a...