The Giannini Foundation and the Economics of Collective Action in the Marketing of California Farm Products

The authors gratefully acknowledge without any implication helpful comments and suggestions provided by Warren E. Johnston, Alex F. McCalla, Daniel Sumner, and Colin Carter and support provided by the Giannini Foundation. The scope of marketing as defi ned in this study includes work related to the markets for farm commodities, marketing institutions, and the individual and collective actions of farmers to enhance their returns through marketing activities, with and without the assistance of the government. Thus this subset of the work of the members of the Giannini Foundation includes studies of (1) supply and demand for agricultural products separately or combined in sector models; (2) the structure, conduct, and performance of the marketing chain, including issues related to marketing margins and imperfect competition; (3) the space, form, and time dimensions of markets for commodities, including aspects such as the economics of storage, transport, handling, plant location, and interregional and international trade; (4) market mechanism substitutes and complements such as forward contracts and futures markets, private and public market information services, and different forms of business organization such as cooperatives and vertical integration; and (5) various forms of government intervention in markets, ranging from laws that facilitate collective action through cooperatives and marketing orders and the like to direct government intervention in markets, including domestic and border policies that may be strictly redistributive (like farm program policies) or that may entail public goods (such as policies related to research and development (R&D), food safety, public health, or exotic pests and diseases). The members of the Giannini Foundation have made a host of contributions across this range of topics.