Agricultural Trade and Cooperatives. Historical Significance versus the Trade of Today

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Agrarian Studies, grade: 2,2, University of Applied Sciences Braunschweig / Wolfenbüttel; Salzgitter, language: English, abstract: This paper analyzes the importance of agricultural trade. The author first gives an overview of the historical significance and then discusses the challenges agriculture faces today. Furthermore, the paper focuses on the concentration processes in private versus cooperative agricultural trade. Agricultural trade has an important meaning not only for the successful work of farmers, but also for the whole society and the whole economy. In the past it helped to give the farmers their seed and to buy the grain, in the same way it was important for the people who needed the grain for food. Only by the measures, how this happens, you can see the progress. In the beginning there was trade without money, only by means of exchange. The agricultural trade has promoted and developed the development of money and the market. Over the years, farmers received money for their harvest, the assortments increased and also when the first machines came, the agricultural trade had to expand to supply all the factories and people with grain and other products. Agricultural trade is active in commodity, input, feed, agricultural machinery, retail, building materials and energy trade. It creates better working and development conditions for farmers through financing, advice and support and other services.