This paper examines the market and organizational factors that led to the bankruptcy in July 2000 of Tri Valley Growers (TVG), a California tomato- and fruit-processing cooperative owned by more than 500 growers. TVG’s bankruptcy was caused by a confluence of organizational and...

Helmberger and Hoos' (HH) 1962 paper is a landmark in the economic theory of agricultural cooperatives, Along with the related work by Helmberger (1964), it represented the definitive treatment of marketing cooperative behavior and standard reading for graduate students in agricultural marketing...

A common belief is that agricultural marketing cooperatives advertise less than their investor-owned counterparts, holding other factors constant. This paper presents both a conceptual and an empirical analysis that questions this conventional wisdom. Our conceptual model analyzes a...

This case study on the former Rice Growers Association (RGA) analyzes the effects of a variety of business decisions and market changes, relative to the ongoing Farmers’ Rice Cooperative (FRC). Interview and survey findings reveal that many respondents felt RGA’s Board of Directors...