The market oriented solution from Proposition 2 is not only attractive by
being simple and being the only solution that will work irrespectively of the
relationship between p and c{z. It is also attractive from a point of view of
treating all farmers equally. Moreover, the equity property implies that the
mechanism is not vulnerable to side trading - no group of farmers can profit
from trading the product among themselves before it is processed.
4 Cooperative Processor
There are some obvious links between the central planner’s solutions in the
last section and the cooperative arrangements that have be used so exten-
sively, in particular within agriculture.
Image that processing is ιmdertaken by a cooperative. The cooperative
is owned and operated by the farmers. Assume furthermore that this is a
traditional cooperative in which
1. Equity gets no interest,
2. Surplus is allocated to members in proportion to patronage,
3. Members have a right to deliver total production to the cooperative
Using the first two principles, we see that the total surplus p ɪʌeʃ ¾' ɪɪɪust
be allocated as
In this payment plan, we have taken into account the fact that any farmer j
only knows his own costs c3∙ and that his production decision therefore can
only depend on cj. By the farmers being risk neutral and by using the third
principle above, we get that farmer i will choose ¾(c<) to solve
-Ci ∙ft(c∣)l
s.t. 0 ≤ qi(ci) ≤ Qi