Marketing Cooperative vs Producer's Agent: The Turkish Dilemma in Modern FFV Market

I Mediterranean Conference of Agro-Food - Barcelona, Spain, April 23rd - 25th, 2007 Since the rapid expansion of modern retailers in Turkish agro-food market, competent intermediary’s forms are required to match up their exigent demand in fresh fruit and vegetables (thereafter FFV) procurement –namely, volume, regularity or quality- with a very~fragmented national supply provided by small family farms.~In this context, the aim of this paper is twofold: it first develops a unified theoretical framework that compares the costs incurred by producers when deciding to market their produce through a private agent or through a marketing cooperative. Drawing on marketing cooperatives theories and transaction cost arguments, we put forward that these systems do not prove the same ability to allow for quality upgrading, above all at the producer’s level.~Second, we analyze on this basis the recent evolution of the FFV sector in Turkey: the Turkish Wholesale Market Law enacted 1995 establishes commission producer’s agents on FFV wholesale market halls who effectively collect an atomized supply and guarantee the~access of small producers to large scale markets. This publication forms part of the Regoverning Markets project.