The Role of E-Business in providing services for farmer-members. Michael Arnhold coordinated the study on member plans to use GPS with the membership of Country Star Cooperative for his Master’s Thesis. The potential for using electronic communication with members, (i.e. technical newsletters, ordering and billing) was examined based on a questionnaire mailed to the membership of Southwest Landmark. Chris Stark used the data for his Master’s Thesis. U.S. agricultural cooperatives are large exporters of foodstuffs. Jeffrey Nawn examined the import patterns of food deficient countries for his Master’s Thesis. Mexico, the Philippines, and several eastern European countries were identified as potential markets for U.S. agricultural cooperatives. Novel approaches to equity capital access. A Master’s student in AED Economics Department is addressing the potential of new business models for agricultural cooperatives. The need for equity capital to facilitate growth has become a major issue among the cooperatives constituting the membership of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives (NCFC). Bobby Moser, Dean of the College of Food, Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, gave a keynote address to the most recent NCFC meeting in Hawaii on the priority that this topic must receive from the land grant research community. The topic was a research effort that corresponded to the dynamic nature of the research program supported by the cooperative endowment. New Generation Cooperatives (NGC’s) as an option for organizing to engage in value-added activities by Ohio farmers: The use of real options for evaluating the investments of corn growers’ decision to invest in a value-added processing plant (a corn chip processing plant) that uses corn as a feedstock. Master’s thesis project for Michael Bailey. An analysis of farmers’ production intentions and willingness to pay for participating in a NGC hog processing plant. Data were collected from hog producers in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. Betsy Belleville analyzed the data for her Master’s thesis. An analysis of the revenues and costs associated with operating a hog processing plant for producers in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. A model plant developed by the National Pork Producers Council was used as a foundation for the study. This was the Master’s thesis project for Kim Gable.