标题：SOCIOECONOMIC CONDITIONS FOR AND IMPACTS OF ESTABLISHING AND OPERATING A NEW GENERATION COOPERATIVE: THE CASE OF THE SOUTH DAKOTA SOYBEAN PROCESSORS
摘要：It has been widely documented that agriculture and rural communities have undergone a seriesof structural changes in recent decades. In agriculture, these changes have taken the form of anincreasingly industrialized agriculture. Simultaneously, many rural communities have decreasedtheir dependence upon agriculture as the main driver of economic activity. These changes havebeen attributed to a number of forces, including changes in consumer preferences led bydemographic shifts, increased global competition forcing a continuous drive towards increasedefficiency, a shift in government policies away from agriculture and towards rural areas ingeneral, and changes in technology (Barr; Senauer, Asp, and Kinsey, pp.1-12; Saxowsky andDuncan). Moreover, changes taking place in agriculture and rural communities have acceleratedin times of economic difficulties such as those in the 1980s (Murdock and Leistritz; Diersen,Janssen, and Loewe; Stefanson and Fulton; and Cobia).
