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Abstract
In this paper the author firstly talks about numerous prejudices that still
exist about cooperatives. The source of these prejudices is the historical period in
which the state fully controlled cooperative movement, compromising and
impeding it. A cooperative, including an agricultural cooperative, is an institution
of a modern society, by which social actor are trying to increase their power at the
market. Agricultural cooperatives exist among farmers both the in the USA and in
the EU.
Each society has been trying to increase its power, which can be seen,
besides other forms, as a quantity of resources that a society possesses. These
resources can be called economic, cultural and social capital. Agricultural
cooperatives represent a lever of rural development, i.e. one of the institutions that
can be used to increase economic, cultural and social capital in an area. The
influence of agricultural cooperatives to employment has two forms: first, they
stimulate self-employment (those who want to engage themselves in agricultural
production know they can join or establish an organization); second, when
agricultural cooperatives invest in industrial plants, the demand for hired labor
increases.