Farmers’ self-reported value of cooperative membership: evidence from heterogeneous business and organization structures

Agricultural and Food Economics

Table 1 Descriptive statistics on dairy and meat farmers

Variable	Dairy 1)		Meat 2)
	Supply	Marketing	Pig	Cattle	Poultry
	Mean	Mean	Mean	Mean	Mean
	(st. dev)	(st. dev)	(st. dev)	(st. dev)	(st. dev)
Farmer age	51	49	50	49	50
Farmer age	(9.7)	(11.8)	(10.4)	(10.6)	(8.7)
Field area, hectares	61	47	99***	72***	84***
Field area, hectares	(52.4)	(30.2)	(67.6)	(61.7)	(47.2)
Cooperative capital, euro 3)	23,800	13,960	30,480***	7,265***	44,400***
Cooperative capital, euro 3)	(34,579)	(11,042)	(43,860)	(13,394)	(48,525)
Alternative buyers	1.9**	2.2**	3.0***	3.0***	1.4***
Alternative buyers	(0.91)	(0.81)	(1.44)	(1.51)	(0.67)
Distance to processing unit	70***	43***	102***	139***	61***
Distance to processing unit	(35.0)	(33.9)	(91.9)	(100.0)	(65.6)
Herd size 4)	33	30	1241	37	-
Herd size 4)	(31.5)	(23.6)	(2826)	(71.2)	-
Production volume, liters/kg/year 4)	270.300	245,600	262,400	30,500	573,000
Number of respondents	350	56	77	138	26
Female, % in sample	24	27	13	15	8
Have expanded, %	22	25	17	27	38
Intention to expand, %	20	25	11	22	38
Intention to exit, %	22	14	16	13	0
Region North-East, N of farmers	5	49	2	16	0
Region West	261	3	27	58	17

1) Mann–Whitney test for difference between supply and marketing in scale variables
2) Kruskall-Wallis test for difference between pig, cattle, and poultry in scale variables
3) Capital suffers from a large number of missing values due to non-responses. Only 122 farmers provided capital information
4) Herd size and production volume were not tested in meat, as such a comparison is not meaningful due to different farm structures. Pigs are only reported for farms specializing in piglets, and in cattle for farms that breed calves
***(p < 0.01), **(p < 0.05), *(p < 0.1)