Well Dan, as far as industry goes, I can put forward the example of our co-operative dairy industry as an effective model of co-operation. My family are fourth generational farmers. We started off as sheep farmers and my husband became more and more disillusioned with this branch of our agricultural industry. The meat companies were run by mainly an old boy network that competed with each other for overseas markets. One company would go overseas and carefully market their meat products, spend the money advertising and sorting out sometimes tricky markets where one had to be intelligent, patient and intuitive to achieve the objective. It would all be a done deal, then another meat company from New Zealand would come straight in after that and undercut the price!!
This sort of thing went on all the time. When we shifted over to dairying it was a whole different ballgame. The Dairy industry in New Zealand is owned by all the dairy farmers. This has changed somewhat in the last few years and I'm not sure to what degree. The farmers collectively own their industry. The best young brains are employed in marketing. When they go looking for new markets overseas they seem to always enter into a partnership or co-operate venture with the country to which they sell product to. They do not undermine the existing country's own dairy industry.
Everyone benefits from this co-operative model and it is a very competitive one. It has to be because we are too small a country, too small to not get it right. Farmers share information and improvements are constant. In this case the farmer holds the power and is not the recipient of whatever the industry decides they will pay him or her.