Research On Membership Rights Of Farmers’ Professional Cooperatives

Farmers professional cooperative is an economic organization that voluntarily united by their own strength,and it combines the farmers’ producers and operators on the basis of contracted operation.The membership right of farmers’ professional cooperative is a subject qualification that cooperative members engage in economic activities in farmers’ professional cooperative,and cooperative members enjoy the corresponding membership rights and fulfill certain membership obligations.Farmers,as the main members of the cooperative,enjoy the right to vote and stand for election,the right to participate in voting,the right to share profit and other rights when attending the meeting of members.As far as the nature of membership rights is concerned,there are four theories in academia: identity right,mixed right,independent civil right,and comprehensive right.The current Farmers’ Professional Cooperative Law has made special provisions on the rights of cooperative members.However,due to the lag of the law,some loopholes in the law have gradually emerged after more than ten years of development.Besides,there have been many irregularities in the development of cooperatives,such as the illegal operation of the interior managers,the nominal system of the board of supervisors and the invalidation of the related functions of the board of supervisors,which leads to the weakening of the overall functions of the cooperatives and the difficulty in realizing the rights of interior members.Through case analysis,it is found that the obstacles affecting the exercise of members’ rights in current practice mainly lie in the following aspects: first,ordinary farmers are deprived of their voting rights by members who have invested more in cooperatives,failing to participate in the meeting of members and to implement their voting rights;second,the right to share profit has not been fully guaranteed,and it is difficult to ensure that share profit are distributed fairly according to the trading volume of the members within the cooperatives;third,ordinary members know nothing about the meeting before convening the meeting of members,and they have no knowledge of the information such as changes in the operation of the cooperatives;fourth,the members of cooperatives cannot get relief after their rights are infringed.In view of the problems existing in the production practice and combined with China’s national conditions and foreign experience,the protection of the rights of farmers’ professional cooperatives members needs to improve the legal provisions on the right to attend meetings and share profit;to improve the cooperative’s share profit system;to establish an interior cooperativesupervision system;to protect members’ right to know in production information and decision-making of major issues and to get timely relief after members’ rights are infringed through public relief and private relief.