Agricultural cooperatives

Many years of significant investment into the production and adoption of productivity-enhancing technologies and practices in agriculture have not yielded the desired results. Most smallholder farmers in Africa remain trapped in poverty. Having realised that addressing production challenges alone is not enough to impact the lives of poor smallholder farmers, resources and attention have now shifted to the marketing side of agriculture. Organising farmers  into  farmer  producer  organisations  (FPOs),  like  clubs,  associations  and  cooperatives,  has  been  one  of  the  strategies  aimed  at  commercialising  smallholder  agriculture.  In  Malawi,  smallholder  farmers  have  been  organised into FPOs of various types and sizes. This qualitative study interrogated the effectiveness of FPOs in Malawi in meeting their objectives, including the objective of enhancing commercialisation of smallholder farmers through increased access to farm inputs, markets, and agricultural extension and advisory services. Mchinji and Ntchisi districts in central Malawi were sampled for the study. We found that while farmers who are members of FPOs have more and frequent access to extension services and affordable inputs, member farmers do not enjoy any advantage over their non-member counterparts when it comes to access to markets and incomes. On the contrary, we found that in some cases farmer members of FPOS face more disadvantages on the market, as they sell their produce too late in the selling season when even exploitative vendors are unwilling to buy. This results in member farmers accepting even lower prices for their produce; situations which leave them with very low farm incomes. There is a need, therefore, to dedicate more resources and a lot of brainstorming in coming up with new models of FPOs that have the capacity to secure profitable markets for farmers, and that will enable the generation of higher farm incomes for their members.

Drawing on an analysis of the Walloon dairy sector, this paper aims at bringing novel insights on the coexistence issue in agrifood transition studies. Whereas most studies explore the coexistence of farm models, our study focuses on value chains, in particular on cooperatives. In the Walloon Region, new dairy cooperatives emerged, as substitute or as complement to the incumbent vertically integrated dairy cooperatives. This paper focuses on the coexistence of dairy cooperative models as enabler of transition toward product diversification. Dairy cooperatives are hybrid actors: economic agents on the market on the one hand, structure of collective agency on the other hand. Williamson’s framework of New Institutional Economics acknowledges that the allocation of resources
by cooperatives depends on governance processes and on the wider institutional context in which the cooperatives evolve. Within the broader frame of the Multi-Level Perspective, this approach allows to consider the socio-technical coherence in which the cooperatives evolve, the effects of this coherence on their pathways of development, and the  complementarity of the cooperative models. This qualitative
analysis builds on semi-directed interviews with actors of the Walloon dairy sector. The results outline distinctions between the new cooperative models and mainstream dairy cooperatives in market approach, definition of milk quality, distribution of added value, governance, and interactions with partners. Both models evolve within a distinct socio-technical coherence, holding, in the case of the mainstream dairy cooperatives,
lock-ins to diversification related to the relationship with the farmer-members and the milk they produce in the industrial vertically integrated model. The new cooperative models circumvent these lock-ins through de-integration and externalization of initiatives, remuneration, and risk. They allow specific groups of actors—still related or unrelated to the mainstream dairy cooperative—to explore new market pathways in accordance with their potential, and to mutually agree on criteria qualifying milk. This research draws the picture of a possible reconfiguration of the dairy landscape toward a more diversified
ecosystem of actors and invites to consider structures of governance in collective action as a cornerstone issue, because of their significant role in terms of enablement, coexistence, and complementarity throughout the transition process.

News forms of proximity collective dynamics emerge among farmers in France. From traditional patterns (co-operative, association, employer groups, etc.), farmers groups are formed, who develop projects in new collective ways, with few references, and sometimes without institutional support. The movement of the agricultural machinery cooperatives (cuma - Coopérative d’Utilisation du Matériel Agricole) is a special witness of these initiatives. Since 2012, the National federation of Cuma (FNCuma) has run a research-action process to better understand this phenomenon, whose first results are detailed in this chapter.

The following report details a case study evaluation of collaboration between hill livestock farmers to achieve Sustainable Intensification (SI), through the Welsh Government Sustainable Management Scheme (SMS).
Findings demonstrate potential for SI to be achieved through a land-sharing approach, with evidence of compatibility between existing farm practices, and priorities, and the enhancement of ecosystem service delivery through new on-farm interventions. Whilst some trade-offs were acknowledged, farmers perceived opportunities to gain value from lower productivity land.
Key drivers for engagement with SI (through the SMS) included:
Concern over future perturbations (associated with ‘unsustainable’ subsidy dependence, future policy uncertainty, and low capacity to increase productivity), prompting the farmers to adapt their farming systems to more environmentally focused activity.
A need to ensure continued business viability, leading to the pursuit of innovative business strategies including ‘payments for ecosystem services’. This was seen to override tensions with productivist goals, with some group members demonstrating changing conceptions of what constitutes ‘good farming’.
Acknowledgement that financial reward was more likely from multiplying environmental outputs through collective working. This was evident amongst group members at the outset, but there was a need for expert input to facilitate understanding of environmental dynamics at a landscape scale and target interventions.
The opportunity (available through the SMS) to advance locally appropriate interventions and measure outputs, demonstrating the efficacy of actions undertaken. The approach pursued was framed as a more results-based model of agri-environmental governance.
Long term commitment to community resilience, demonstrating importance of social sustainability as a component of SI.
Lessons learned for future stakeholder collaboration to support SI include:
The landscape typologies framework (Dynamic Typology Tool) was not used to inform the interventions undertaken through the SMS. However, subsequent comparisons show that local priorities are largely aligned with those of high relative importance in the national context. Areas of disagreement may reflect discrepancies between the SMS objectives and those of SI. Specifically, interventions for diversification and animal nutrition and growth were highly ranked using the typologies, and may be popular with farmers, but would not directly address the environmental outcomes targeted by the SMS scheme.
Finer resolution modelling with the Land Utilisation Capability Indicator (LUCI) was applied to spatially target the chosen interventions within the study area. This was beneficial in enabling placement to support improvement in multiple ecosystem services as well as increasing farmer confidence in likely benefits. SI involves understanding trade-offs at landscape scale. LUCI was perceived by farmers as a useful mechanism for integrating scientific knowledge into decision making. At present there are very few tools that operate at these scales and that can handle these complex trade-offs.
Scenario analysis for the planned SMS activity forecast benefits including an increase of 93ha mitigated for rapid runoff and diffuse pollutants, and an additional 27 ha accessible to broadleaved woodland species. Testing of a comparative scenario on only one farm demonstrates how greater benefits are achieved through collaborative action at a landscape scale.
Facilitation was required to help farmers to use output from the LUCI tool, which is intended for use by scientists or advisers. A comparison with the Taw, where similar baseline maps were produced, further highlights the need for funding, both for facilitation to support use of scientific evidence in intervention design and to provide financial incentive for farmers to take actions forwards.
Collaboration with scientists is likely necessary to design schemes to maximise benefits at landscape scales and fully account for the local environmental factors. This may be a barrier to entry for many groups. Whilst monitoring must be tailored to the specific actions undertaken, some integration with national level monitoring may reduce the burden on monitoring design and collection of control data.
Evaluation of knowledge exchange processes demonstrates good potential for combining farmers’ experiential and practice-based knowledges with specialist (environmental and modelling) insights, when the basis of farmers’ existing understandings is acknowledged and used as a starting point. In particular, visual and map based references had notable successes here.

The book is structured like a dictionary and as such presents 23 short contributions, each with a different topic and an author’s profile and disciplinary perspective. All letters aim to show how diverse, rich and old is the co-operative sector worldwide. All letters discuss explicitly or not the ability of the co-operative sector to contribute to growth and development. Taken together, the letters provide a multidisciplinary explanation of how co-op­eratives contribute to our life, how they have been doing so for a long time, and, through reinvention, might still do so for years to come. All letters position the role of co-operatives with reference to traditional firms but do so in a critical rather than a polemical or utopian way.



Questo libro è strutturato come un dizionario e come tale presenta 23 brevi contributi, ciascuno con un diverso argomento, scritto da autori con un background differente e una diversa prospettiva disciplinare. Tutti i capitoli ambiscono a descrivere quanto sia antico, ricco e diverso il settore cooperativo a livello mondiale. Tutti i capitoli descrivono esplicitamente o meno il peso del settore cooperativo sulla crescita e lo sviluppo. Presi insieme, i capitoli offrono una spiegazione multidisciplinare del contributo offerto alle nostre vite dal settore cooperativo, illustrano come così è stato da molto tempo e come potrebbe essere ancora a lungo attraverso il reinventarsi del ruolo delle cooperative nella nostra società. Tutti i capitoli descrivono le cooperative con riferimento alle imprese tradizionali ma fanno ciò in maniera critica, piuttosto che retorica o polemica.

Drawing on an analysis of the Walloon dairy sector, this paper aims at bringing novel insights on the coexistence issue in agrifood transition studies. Whereas most studies explore the coexistence of farm models, our study focuses on value chains, in particular on cooperatives. In the Walloon Region, new dairy cooperatives emerged, as substitute or as complement to the incumbent vertically integrated dairy cooperatives. This paper focuses on the coexistence of dairy cooperative models as enabler of transition toward product diversification. Dairy cooperatives are hybrid actors: economic agents on the market on the one hand, structure of collective agency on the other hand. Williamson's framework of New Institutional Economics acknowledges that the allocation of resources by cooperatives depends on governance processes and on the wider institutional context in which the cooperatives evolve. Within the broader frame of the Multi-Level Perspective, this approach allows to consider ...

For years, scholars and policy makers have ar gued that cooperatives, particularly agricultural cooperatives, exhibit
organizational inefficiencies primarily caused by individual member behavior that is often independent and non-cooperative
conflicting with the formation of effective coalition building. This free riding tendency creates significant challenges for a
continued joint collaboration between and among member patrons. Yet, agricultural cooperatives have a long history of
surviving as successful business enterprises. This paper presents a framework that proposes generic solutions effective as
design principles in addressing the negative consequences of high organization costs, thus leading to sustainable common
group interest activities.