Abstract
Thirty years ago Helmberger speculated that industrialization of agriculture would lead to the demise of farmer cooperatives (Helmberger 1966, p. 1434). In responding to Helmberger's prediction, Abrahamsen countered by suggesting that as industrialization of agriculture evolved, cooperatives would increasingly become the farmer's integrating agency (Abrahamsen, p. 1442). In this paper I examine these two divergent opinions by (a) briefly describing the structural and strategic evolution of U.S. farmer cooperatives since the Helmberger and Abrahamsen (H&A) forecasts, (b) utilizing recent developments in neo-institutional economic (organizational economic) theory to generate hypotheses regarding structural and strategic shifts in U.S. agricultural cooperatives, and (c) further applying neo-institutional economics to speculate what the future might hold for U.S. producerowned and -controlled agricultural cooperatives.
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