Cooperatives in Serbian agriculture: Between reality and possibilities

Abstract

Today, when there is no single country with developed agriculture sector, where cooperatives do not play the key role in food production and distribution, Serbia makes the first steps in cooperatives development. The goal of the paper is to identify inhibiting factors for cooperative development in Serbia, based on historical aspect and farm structure trends. Besides, Serbia has reached historical inheritance in farm cooperatives. Period of half a century after the Second World War was enough to come to a new start with the idea of cooperatives. Results confirm the existence of several inhibiting factors in cooperative development. Current farm structure and applied strategies of family farms are more oriented to individual action. The idea of cooperatives is unclear to most of farmers and burdened with negative experience from previous decades. Numerous examples of good vertical coordination along food chains with big and middle sized farms attract the minds from cooperative idea. Besides that, institutional support is not adequate.

Keywords

• cooperatives
• farms
• history of cooperative movement
• serbia