THE APPROACH OF PRODUCERS ORGANISATIONS TO THEIR SMALLEST MEMBERS – AN EVIDENCE FROM HUNGARIAN FRUITAND VEGETABLE SECTOR

Abstract

In today’s food-retail industry, it is very hard for small-sized agricultural producers to becomesuppliers of large chain stores, as these require products in large volumes and with consistent quality.Participating in producer organisations (PO-s) and selling collectively is an alternate solution for them.Producer organisations receive support from the EU. On the other hand, very small producers are evenunable to successfully join PO-s. The present Hungarian case-study examines the attitudes of PO-s tothe membership of small producers. We were looking for the answer that how it is worth for small-sizedproducers to sell through PO-s. Without the organisations, mostly the conventional sales channels(i.e. markets, small shops) or short supply chains remain for them as sale opportunities. According tothe most general and comprehensive opinion of our survey, rather the reliability and keeping of the rulesare important for the PO-s, and not the plant size. Specific costs of PO-s are higher in the case of smallproducers, but discrimination was fundamentally atypical.

Keywords

• producer organisation
• small-sized agricultural producers
• food-markets