Cooperatives across Clusters

Lessons from the Cranberry Industry

Anil Hira, Paul Gottlieb, Neil Reid, Stephan Goetz, Elizabeth Dobis

• Publisher: Oregon State University Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781962645010
• eBook ISBN: 9781962645027
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Agribusiness
• Index: Social Sciences

Most agricultural production is of commodity or undifferentiated products. Producers suffer from a roller-coaster ride of price swings, over- or under-production, weather and pest threats, and the inability of family famers to capture anything beyond a small percentage of the final price.

Cooperatives Across Clusters provides lessons from the cranberry industry, a commodity product organized mostly into family farms in seven different clusters around North America. The industry is remarkable in that it's substantially organized around one large cooperative, Ocean Spray. The authors examine how the cooperative came to be, the challenges of coordination and industry leadership across the diverging clusters, and the lessons for cooperation for other agricultural industries.

The book provides a multi-layered contribution to agricultural economics. First, it examines location decisions and what factors supersede growing conditions to allow industries to arise around production. Second, it explores pathways available for farmers to try to overcome, through cooperative organization, the natural boom-bust cycles of commodity price swings. Third, it looks at how cooperative decisions are made, and the challenges of providing industry leadership, including research and development and collective marketing, through a cooperative that faces continual defections and new problems. Finally, through in-depth historical, statistical, and field research, it provides a comprehensive study of the cranberry industry and suggests ways farmers can grow the industry. Agricultural policymakers, farmers, industry specialists, and researchers of agriculture and clusters more generally will find this to be an important and informative new resource.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Acronyms
• Acknowledgments and Methods of Study
• List of Interviewees
• 1. Cluster Theory and the Challenge of Agricultural Cooperation
• 2. Why Do Cranberries Cluster?
• 3. The History of Cranberries: Escaping the Commodity Trap via Cooperatives
• 4. Market Forces Threaten Cooperation
• 5. The Emerging Giant in Québec—A Challenge to Ocean Spray Leadership?
• 6. Comparing Ocean Spray to Other Large Agricultural Cooperatives
• 7. Conclusion, Recommendations, and Implications for Agricultural Industry Organization
• References
• Appendixes
• About the Authors
• Index