Honorable Mentioned of the paper, "Does membership in agricultural cooperatives improve marketing efficiency? Insights from smallholder coffee farmers in selected provinces of the Philippines."

In the recent EATA-NABEA-KITRI Biannual International Virtual Conference and Research Symposium held last 24 April 2021, the paper of Asst. Prof. Liezel S. Cruz of the Institute of Cooperatives and Bio-Enterprise Development* and Dr. Agham C. Cuevas of the Department of Economics*, received an Honorable Mentioned award. 

The study entitled,  "Does membership in agricultural cooperatives improve marketing efficiency? Insights from smallholder coffee farmers in selected provinces of the Philippines", aimed to analyze the correlation between cooperative membership and marketing efficiency among coffee farmers in the provinces of Cavite, Benguet, and Mountain Province, Philippines. The study revealed that an average farmer generated P42.6 more farm income for every peso spent on marketing activities if the farmer was a member of an agricultural cooperative. This implied that membership positively improved the marketing efficiency of coffee farmers. Farmers who sold their processed coffee to cooperatives and who had price access were observed to have higher marketing efficiency while those who used their own vehicles and who transported products during the rainy season were seen to be less efficient. Farmers who were females, adopted more processing technologies, took longer to search for price information, sold to cooperatives, had more coffee experience, and whose farms were located away from technology source were more likely to become members. 

Thus, this study recommended the promotion of cooperative membership among farmers to improve their marketing efficiency and capacity-building activities related to technology adoption and management of cooperatives. ​AMQuilloy

*College of Economics and Management, University of the Philippines Los Baños, Laguna

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