Sustaining Agricultural Cooperative: The Picture in the United Kingdom, Japan and Nigeria

This study was conducted to understand how agricultural cooperatives in the United Kingdom and Japan have managed to remain resilient compared to Nigeria in their roles in the farming sector. A comparison of the development of agricultural cooperatives in United Kingdom (UK), Japan and Nigeria was carried out using secondary data obtained from the ministries of agriculture, international organisations. Data obtained was analysed with descriptive statistics. The results reveal that the total number of agricultural cooperatives in Nigeria was about a hundred times more than that in the UK and eight times that in Japan suggesting that numbers decline with development. In the UK membership declined from 324,772 in 1982 to 150,000 in 2011, a 53.8% decline while the number increased in Japan (5%) from 9,234,138 in 2006 to 9,740,311 in 2011. Membership increase was considerable (65.4%) in Nigeria from 2.6 million in 1989-1992 to 4.3million in 2005. The turnover values for the UK and Japan were $4 billion and $50billion respectively. The paper recommends the need for amalgamation of agricultural cooperatives, strengthening the 3-tiered cooperative structure and appropriate institutional environment to foster development of agricultural cooperatives in farming sector laden with peasant farmers such as in Nigeria. This would increase their effectiveness, competitiveness and position viz a viz other player on the food chain.