Price Factors Determining the Involvement of Farms and Households in the System of Agricultural Consumer Cooperation

The purpose of this work is to assess the impact of price factors on the sustainability of the development of agricultural consumer cooperatives. The study is conducted on the example of cooperatives selling grain, milk, and potatoes. As an indicator characterizing the economic sustainability of the development of the cooperation system, it’s proposed to use the ratio of the volume of products sold through the cooperative to the volume of the corresponding products produced by small agricultural producers. It was revealed that the involvement of farmers in the activities of grain marketing cooperatives increases during periods of lower producer prices for grain, with an increase in prices, the farmer’s activity decreases. For the development of dairy marketing cooperatives, more significant factor isn’t the level of producer prices, but their share in the structure of consumer prices. Price factors don’t have significant impact on the development of marketing cooperatives selling potatoes. It’s proposed to use the increase in the share of the agricultural producer in the price of the final product as a criterion for the optimal parameters of functioning of the cooperative.