Cooperation in the New Zealand dairy industry

Abstract

The term "cooperative" has been used to describe types of economic entities throughout the world, in capitalist and socialist states. Although each country has its own definition of a cooperative, the common feature is that an activity is undertaken by a group to give advantages to its members which they could not obtain individually. These include economies of scale in land utilization, economies in capital costs by sharing machinery and equipment, and reduced costs of services by eliminating intermediaries who make profits from performing services. E. Fred Koller has expressed this when he says "a cooperative may be viewed as a form of business organization - an economic entity - owned and controlled by its member patrons for the rendering of services for their mutual benefit as patrons." E. Fred Koller, (1947) p.183. But apart from this very generalized description there is little else that can be asserted as common to all cooperatives throughout the world. For example western theorists tend to assume that cooperatives are composed of sovereign economic units, F. Robotka, (1946) p.102. while socialist countries describe as cooperative, farms and machinery pools which are collectively owned. e.g. The Chinese advanced cooperatives of 1957 and advanced cooperatives in Czechoslavakia & G.D.R. See J. Kolarik (1957). Furthermore, cooperatives may have different functions, and may be producer, consumer or marketing organizations, or combinations of these, while the degree of contact between members ranges from the very slight with a limited range of activities as in a cooperative retail shop e.g. Farmers' Coop., or the P.D.C., Palmerston North where shareholders rarely meet and purchase goods from many other shops besides the cooperatives. to the extensive co operating and contact of the Israeli Kibbutzim.