Associating farmers in the producers' organisation for sustainable development of agriculture in Slovakia

摘要

Producers' organisations (POs) help farmers organise themselves in cooperatives as a tool to consolidate their market orientation and generate a solid market income. Position of POs in food supply chain is connected in relation to their processors. The internal governance refers to its decisionmaking processes. The institutional environment refers to the political and legal context which may have a supporting or constraining effect on their sustainable development. Imbalance in bargaining power between the parties in the food chain attracts a lot of attention from policy makers. EU Commission seeks to facilitate the restructuring of the sector by encouraging the creation of voluntary agricultural POs. The aim of the paper is to provide an analysis of the current level of development of POs, to identify factors that enable or constrain their sustainable development as well as specific measures which are effective for POs development in the Slovak agriculture.