Increasingly, they are affected by the framework established through international negotiations - a framework which promotes a competitive entrepreneurial structure for farming. This potential is far from being fully exploited. Agricultural cooperatives at the primary level are an extension of the farming enterprise, and integrated into it. The cooperative should be a profit centre in its own right for the benefit of its members. However, when judging the action of the cooperative and its efficiency, one should also take into account its impact on the profitability of the farming operations of its members.
Members control both the management and the capital of their cooperative.
The farmers who have done best have followed their product up the food chain and so have been able to benefit from the value-added generated. In a context of liberalization and withdrawal of government from agriculture, the services provided by farmer cooperatives and other farmer controlled businesses are of increasing importance. Technological change and the modernization of agriculture 2. Maintaining farmers' incomes in a more open market economy with less government support. Strengthening the economic power of farmers in a global food market increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few large transnational companies.