Performance Evaluation of Devisthan Agriculture Cooperative Limited of Kaski District

Abstract

Cooperative “Coop” or Cooperative “Co-op” is an autonomous association of people who voluntarily cooperate for their mutual social, economic and cultural benefits. In the context of Nepal, the government, private sector and the cooperatives are regarded as three major pillars for economic development in general and agriculture development in particular. In this line, the study entitled “Performance Evaluation of Devisthan Agriculture Cooperative Limited of Kaski District” tried to evaluate the performance of cooperative and its cooperative vegetable farming. Thus, evaluation indicators such as relevancy, efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability have been developed and analyzed. Further, this study applied quantitative approach and trend survey methodology. Required numerical data were collected from 138 sample respondents and subjective information was generated from 12 participants (4 female & 8 male). This study brought theoretical insights from social capital, financial management, agriculture transformation and agriculture modernization theories that are then supported by empirical findings in the study. Empirically, the study was conducted in Hemja village of Pokhara Metropolitan City in which household survey questionnaire, observation and key informant interview techniques were applied for collecting data and generating information. The summative values of the performance measurement indicators such as relevancy, efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability are 2.21, 2.58, 1.88, 2.01 and 2.13 respectively. All the values fall between agree and neutral. Similarly, mean, mode and standard deviation of merged variables value are 2.15, 2.20 and 0.33 respectively. This shows that the respondents were not satisfied on the performance of the cooperative and its cooperative vegetable farming. The cooperative effort has been generating rural economy and creating employment opportunities equally from commercial financing, micro credit financing and development financing sectors in general and agriculture modernization in particular. Finally, knowledge generated from this study has greater implication on knowledge level (to the readers), practice level (to the experts and stakeholders who are working for rural development) and policy level (to the policy makers and planners working in central and local level).