The regulation of American agricultural marketing cooperatives underwent three stages—the regulation of the traditional generation, new generation and limited cooperatives. The regulation of traditional cooperatives resulted from the conflict between the farmers' need to enhance their negotiating power and the structure of the equity joint venture. The regulation of the new generation cooperatives was the result of the conflict between the farmers' need to enter the food processing chain and the limitations of the traditional marketing cooperatives. The regulation of limited cooperatives was promoted by the conflict between the farmers need to enter the food processing chain with ″outside capital″ and the traditional marketing cooperatives. The Chinese legislation on the farmers' cooperatives is a big compromise with the reality. From the perspective of legislation theory, those pure farmers' marketing cooperatives featuring cooperative sales, those featuring cooperative processing, and the mixed farmers' marketing cooperatives may draw on the experiences of the traditional cooperatives, the new generation cooperatives, and the limited cooperatives of the United States respectively.