Assessment of Cooperatives in the Poultry Industry - 2013.pdf - Seda

Research Report: Addressing the Needs, Opportunities and Challenges of Cooperatives
and Collectively Owned Enterprises in the Poultry and Related Industries
cooperatives surveyed had 25% or less of their members working in the cooperative, while 61% had
full-time participation from all of their members.
The average cooperative comprises of six members. However, larger cooperatives push this average
up; almost half of cooperatives have five members. Very few cooperative have additional nonmembers
employed at the cooperative. Almost 60% of cooperatives do not hire any additional
people to assist within the business. Where cooperatives do employ additional staff, they generally
hire two additional people. This indicates that very few of the cooperatives surveyed are expanding
enough to justify additional people and also that very few cooperatives are successful enough to
require additional labour.
One of the benefits of a cooperative is the ability to bring together the skills of a number of people.
In order to understand where skills are lacking within the cooperative, questions were asked around
the skills set of the collective group. The table below (Table 4-3) illustrates the percentage of
responses within each skill category. For example, 43% of cooperatives stated that the cooperative’s
management skills were ‘good’.
The blocks highlighted in the table below represent the highest voting within each category. The
majority of cooperatives placed a fairly high rating on their skills overall, with ‘good’ being the most
voted category, with nine of the highest ratings being in this group.
Cooperatives rated their
skills lowest in computer
literacy and applying for
tenders
Cooperatives rated themselves the lowest in applying for
tenders and computer literacy, with the majority of
respondents rating their skills in this category as ‘very poor’.
Book keeping/budgeting had fairly even responses across the
skills spectrum. Although 29% rated their bookkeeping skills
as ‘good’, this was closely followed by the categories of
‘average’ and ‘poor’ with 21% and 25% respectively. Taken together this demonstrates that 64% of
responses rated bookkeeping skills as average or below average. This is further supported by the fact
that 32% of cooperatives reported financial management as their biggest concern in the
management of their cooperative.
The ability of managing the products and services of a cooperative
received a relatively even number of responses across the skill rating,
with a slightly higher number of people responding that their skills in this
category are good. Negotiating discounts for bulk buying is a skill that
had a lot of divergence across the categories. Some 48% of cooperatives
rated their skills in bulk buying as good, while 22% rated their skills in
this area as very poor. This may indicate that there is a large amount of
variance in the ways in which cooperatives buy feed, with some of them
simply buying from the nearest supplier while others make an effort to
find cheaper suppliers and bargain for discounts.
32% of
cooperatives
reported financial
management as
their biggest
concern in the
management of
their cooperative
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