The approach of producers organisat ions to their smallest members – an evidence from Hungarian fruit and vegeta ble sector

In today’s food-retail industry, it is very hard for small-sized agricultural producers to become suppliers of large chain stores, as these require products in large volumes and with consistent quality. Participating in producer organisations (PO-s) and selling collectively is an alternate solution for them. Producer organisations receive support from the EU. On the other hand, very small producers are even unable to successfully join PO-s. The present Hungarian case-study examines the attitudes of PO-s to the membership of small producers. We were looking for the answer that how it is worth for smallsized producers to sell through PO-s. Without the organisations, mostly the conventional sales channels (i.e. markets, small shops) or short supply chains remain for them as sale opportunities. According to the most general and comprehensive opinion of our survey, rather the reliability and keeping of the rules are important for the PO-s, and not the plant size. Specific costs of PO-s are higher in the case of small producers, but discrimination was fundamentally atypical.