The Critical Success Factors of Agricultural Cooperatives in Mekong River Delta, Vietnam

Abstract

In order to help farmers improve production, there is a need to link input and output operations, and agricultural cooperatives may be the best form. The cooperatives in Vietnam in general and in the Mekong River Delta in particular, however, still have certain drawbacks in their operation. The major objective of this paper is to find critical success factors of the agricultural cooperatives in the Mekong River Delta, Vietnam. Based on direct interviews with 125 agricultural cooperative chairmen in 5 surveyed provinces, the findings of this study found that factors such as operating environment, management, and resources were closely related to the success of these cooperatives. Specifically, this study found that the infrastructure and socioeconomic conditions where the cooperatives operated, the operational scale of the cooperatives, the size of cultivated areas, the capital amount, the educational attainment of cooperative managers, the ratio of trained managers and other related resources played an important role in the success of the cooperatives in the Mekong River Delta, Vietnam.