engleski

Attitudes of Croatian Farmers Regarding Business Cooperation

The starting point in recognizing importance and need for business cooperation of farmers, either through cooperatives, contracting of production with food processing or in other forms, was an assumption, that these forms could economically strengthen the (small) family farms which are predominant in Croatian agriculture. The paper is based on empirical date collected in Croatia at the begging of 1999, on the representative sample of 881 family farms, as the part of the project “The Form of the Business Cooperation in Agriculture”. It is turned to attitudes and intentions of farmers regarding business cooperation in agriculture. The results indicate that a comparatively small number of surveyed farmers were or are involved in some form of cooperation in agriculture and find participation in these associations useful. The idea of establishing “new” forms of business cooperation in agriculture has been well received by the Croatian farmers, about two third find it very good or good. According to their opinions, business cooperation brings the following advantages such as joint appearance on the market ( better selling ) and more favorable conditions for purchase of reproduction materials, what would be motivated them to join the business cooperation associations. There were a statistically significant relations between some sociodemographic characteristics of respondents and their intentions to join future associations of business cooperation.

business cooperation; farmers; market

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