STIMULATING COOPERATION AMONG FARMERS IN A POST-SOCIALIST ECONOMY: LESSONS FROM A PUBLIC-PRIVATE MARKETING PARTNERSHIP IN POLAND

Stimulating cooperation among farmers in a post-socialist economy:
lessons from a public-private marketing partnership in Poland

Andreas Gramzow and Martin Petrick *

Abstract

This paper shows how the involvement of local governments and individuals allowed the suc-
cessful creation of a public-private partnership for agricultural marketing in South-Eastern
Poland, despite a generally negative perception of cooperation among the rural population.
While the regional distribution network for agricultural products is largely market-based, the
partnership only emerged due to collective action between local leaders. The partnership does
not require farmers to become shareholders, uses a small decision making body and offers
complementary services to farmers. However, there has been little stimulation of broader de-
velopment activities within the local society, and the involvement of local governments has
become unstable over time.

Keywords

Public-private partnership, endogenous initiatives, rural development, Poland.

1 Introduction

In many former socialist countries, decentralised governance mechanisms are difficult to im-
plement due to the traditional, strongly centralised administrative system. Similarly, ap-
proaches built on local collective action and participation of the civil society often meet dis-
approval, because they have been ideologically abused by former regimes. For example,
Balint (2004) recently investigated to what extent local cooperative arrangements in Roma-
nia could reduce development barriers such as inadequate restructuring of input and output
markets in agriculture. Her findings reveal that most farmers reject cooperation, due to a lack
of true cooperative tradition and negative experiences with forced cooperation during social-
ism.

In this paper we show how the involvement of local governments and private individuals al-
lowed the successful creation of a marketing association in South-Eastern Poland, despite a
hostile environment for decentralised governance similar to other post-socialist countries. In
contrast to traditional service cooperatives, the marketing organisation we study has the form
of a public-private partnership with only a small number of members, which has distinct con-
sequences for risk allocation, decision making and funding.¹

In the sequel, we first introduce our case study region (Section 2). We then summarise a num-
ber of typical barriers to successful collective action on the local level (Section 3). Section 4
discusses the term public-private partnership according to the recent literature. Section 5 pre-
sents the public-private partnerhsip “Chmielnik Zdroj” (Well of Chmielnik), shows which

* Andreas Gramzow and Dr. Martin Petrick are both research associates at the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural
Development in Central and Eastern Europe (IAMO), Theodor-Lieser Straβe 2, 06120 Halle (Saale).

¹ A detailed presentation of the case study results is given in Gramzow (2005). A preliminary version of this
article was published as: Petrick, M. and Gramzow, A. (2007): Decentralised rural governance in a post-
socialist economy: a case of community-based agricultural marketing in Southeastern Poland, in: Ko-
Chendorfer-Lucius, G., Pleskovic, B. (eds.): Agriculture for Development, Berlin Workshop Series, The
World Bank, Washington D.C., in print.

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