Marketing problems of agricultural cooperatives: An application in Burdur province

In the history of humanity, agriculture and agribusiness has always been an area that maintains its importance, depending on nutrition of people. Considering the agricultural sector, which has an important place in terms of the welfare of the society, it can be said that the countries that have completed their development or have reached the prosperous level are in good condition in food supply. Today's developments make agribusiness even more important. The negative consequences of increasing rural to urban migration, the concentration of the population at certain points, irregular urbanization and climate change create various difficulties for societies to reach food. It is estimated that more than 800 million people around the world face hunger and more than 2 billion people do not have access to reliable, nutritious and sufficient food. It can also be said that after the global COVID-19 pandemic, the problems related to food supply will continue to increase. Considering the agricultural sector in Turkey, there is a structure in which there are public, private sector and cooperatives, but when compared to developed countries, the rate of presence and impact of cooperatives in the sector is open to discussion. Cooperatives that prioritize the economic interests of their members and attach importance to social benefit instead of making profit as their founding philosophy can be considered as an effective, efficient and sustainable alternative in the agricultural sector. When we look at successful agricultural cooperatives, it can be said that the producer, who has the main labor in the product, has an advantageous position and has positive social effects on the region where the cooperative is established. Agricultural cooperatives derive economic benefit by selling products at a fair price. In this sense, in all processes from production to sales, cooperatives have important duties in terms of marketing activities, both in providing cost-effective inputs to the producer and in the logistics and sale of products. From this perspective, it is important to identify the problems experienced by agricultural cooperatives in order to create effective marketing effort. In the first part of this study, the concept of agricultural cooperatives is discussed in detail. In the second part, marketing subject and marketing problems in agricultural cooperatives are evaluated. In the last part, the results of the questionnaire study in terms of marketing problems applied to the managers of the organizations operating as dairy cooperatives in Burdur province were evaluated. In practice, it has been tried to determine the problems of cooperatives related to marketing environment, product, price, distribution and promotion and the relationship between these problems and marketing performance. Opinions of cooperative managers on marketing problems; were evaluated according to their age, the time they worked as cooperative manager and their education level. Keywords: Agribusiness, Agricultural Cooperatives, Marketing in Agricultural Cooperatives, Marketing Problems of Agricultural Cooperatives