Investigating Enterprise Risk Management in the Context of Grain and Farm Supply Cooperatives

Abstract

Enterprise risk management (ERM) provides a framework for risk management that assesses and analyzes the broad spectrum of risks facing an organization and considers the organizations capacity to withstand risk and appetite for risk. ERM has not been previously applied to agricultural cooperatives but these producer-owned firm could benefit from ERM based strategies. This research investigates how the principles of ERM could be applied to grain marketing and farm supply cooperatives. The research measures and models the major risk areas facing these firms, investigates the correlation between risk components, determines the impact of each risk area on the cooperative�s overall risk and investigates the impact of management decisions such as profit distribution and equity management on the cooperative�s ability to withstand risk. The research uses historical data from 10 case-study Oklahoma cooperatives and a cooperative simulation model developed at Oklahoma State University. The results indicated that, on average, variation in grain volume was the largest source of risk followed by variation in grain margin and variation in fertilizer margin. The research found substantial variation in risk impacts across the case study firms. The results also indicated that profit distribution and equity management decisions had substantial impact of the cooperative�s ability to sustain risk.