Agricultural marketing cooperatives are potentially important tools for rural development. However, many cooperatives experience significant outside sales to private intermediaries. This study analyzes the problem of outside sales in a coffee cooperative in northern Peru, and finds that the labor practices of cooperative members exert significant influence on their level of outside sales. I find that coffee growers who use more intensively cooperative labor networks known as choba-choba, as well as family household labor, engage in fewer outside sales and channel more sales through the cooperative. These results imply a symbiotic relationship between agrarian marketing cooperatives and non-market labor practices, and suggest an important role for robust community structures in building sustainable livelihoods in agrarian regions of the developing world.
