The impact of producer organizations on farm performance: The case study of large farms from Slovakia

This paper estimates the farm level impact of producer organizations' (PO) membership in Slovakia and the effectiveness of support provided to POs under the EU Rural Development Programme (RDP). We employ the PSM-DID econometric approach on a database of large Slovak commercial farms for 2006 and 2015. First, our results show that belonging to a PO improves the economic performance of farms in Slovakia. Second, in the short-run the support granted under RDP 2007-2013 to newly established PO does not improve the farm performance; only established and older POs (and potentially supported in the past) generate benefits to their members. Third, the estimates provide indirect evidence that the disbursement of PO support granted in the financial period 2007-2013 was rather ineffective in selecting POs with the highest potential to generate benefits to its members. Our analysis confirms that many POs were created for the sole purpose just to benefit from the support. This result is reinforced by the observed high closure rate of supported POs.