Political Mediation and Agricultural Cooperation: Strawberry Farms in California

Abstract

Agricultural production cooperatives have long been promoted as mechanisms for achieving land reform, economic democracy, and rural development. They have borne a heavy symbolic burden as a future design for popular control and as a present weapon against economic inequality. Despite their promise, however, production cooperatives have proved particularly difficult to establish. Not only must they overcome the standard barriers to new entrants to agriculture, such as access to land, labor, capital, expertise, and markets, but they also confront the special problems of the cooperative form of organization. Because cooperatives mandate democratic control over policy and procedure, their success in generating member participation, in resolving internal conflicts, and in ensuring adherence to collective agreements is crucial to enterprise viability. The literature on cooperatives indicates that internal factionalism and dissension have been major obstacles to cooperative success in both developed and underdeveloped nations.' Explanation and resolution of these problems have been significant priorities for policymakers as well as social scientists. While some scholars of cooperative development note the general impact of external conditions on cooperative success,2 those who directly address the issue of factionalism have E. C. Banfield, Government Project (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1951); C. J. Eras