Empowering Family Farms through Cooperatives and Producer Marketing Boards
以新西兰主要农业出口产业为例，探讨合作社和生产者营销委员会如何帮助家庭农场抵御市场风险、获取下游利润、保持技术所有权并减少竞争，反驳了新自由主义对营销委员会的批评。
The connections between family farms and the organizations linking them to the agrocommodity chains have been neglected in debates about the reproduction of family farms. We use the example of cooperatives and producer marketing boards in the main agricultural export industries of New Zealand to inform this debate. Regulation by central government has been crucial to the establishment and continuance of producer marketing boards, especially in the face of substantial neoliberal criticism of their very existence. Critics of producer marketing boards—the New Zealand Department of Treasury, nonfarm capitals, and one corporate agriculturalist—argue on the basis of theoretical efficiency, but offer little empirical evidence. Using insights from the family farm and cooperation literatures, we argue that cooperatives and producer marketing boards help shield family farms from the full costs of market relations, assist shareholders in capturing downstream profits, enable farmers to develop and maintain ownership of new technology, reduce competition among farmers, and allow farmers more control of their industries than would otherwise be the case.