Because agricultural products are produced by numerous individual farmers and independent agricultural contractors, the marketing and bargaining position of individual farmers and independent agricultural contractors will be adversely affected unless they are free to join together voluntarily in cooperative organizations as authorized by law. Furthermore, membership by a farmer or independent agricultural contractor in a cooperative organization can only be meaningful if a handler of agricultural products is required to bargain in good faith with an agricultural cooperative organization as the representative of the members of such organization who have had a previous course of dealing with such handler. The purpose of this Article is to provide standards for the qualification of agricultural cooperative organizations for bargaining purposes, to define the mutual obligation of handlers and agricultural cooperative organizations to bargain with respect to the production, sale and marketing of agricultural products and to provide for the enforcement of such obligation. [PL 2019, c. 248, §2 (AMD).]
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