Farmers' Cooperatives and Sustainable Food Systems in Europe

Raquel Ajates Gonzalez

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351216289
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Farmers' cooperatives are very prevalent in the European Union, where they account for approximately half of agricultural trade and thus are key to articulating rural realities and in shaping the sustainability credentials of European food and farming. This book analyses to what extent farmers' cooperatives are working to benefit their members, are showing concern for their communities and are promoting cooperative economies. It offers a multilevel set of theoretical, disciplinary, methodological, empirical and social perspectives, using the UK and Spain as contrasting examples, and analyses whether agricultural cooperatives contribute to achieving sustainable food systems. The book presents empirical data from diverse and rich case studies, from large, international cooperatives, to small, multi-stakeholder initiatives. This provides an alternative viewpoint to that of economics, which tends to dominate the study of agricultural cooperatives. The author presents a new theoretical framework that provides a novel lens to study farmers' cooperatives as organisations deeply embedded in power dynamics of the food system and agricultural policy that shape and constraint their potential to adopt cooperative and sustainable practices.

The book is a major addition to the study of agricultural cooperatives and their impact in the development of fairer and more sustainable food systems and it is one of the first detailed accounts of multi-stakeholder food and farming cooperatives in Europe. It is a valuable resource for all scholars working on cooperatives, as well as for students studying agricultural and food policy, environmental justice and rural sociology.

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1 Introducing agricultural cooperatives in the context of a failing food system

Context, clashing definitions, principles and typologies

Despite earlier records of farming cooperatives, it was not until 1852 in Britain that the legal cooperative form entered the law for the first time in history (Zeuli and Cropp, 2004). During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, diverse farmer cooperatives mushroomed across the European continent. By pooling resources together, farmers could maximise their purchasing power and acquire agricultural inputs of better standards. In post-war Europe, the creation of the Common Market marked a period of policy changes and a heated period of cooperative formation owing to the abolition of marketing boards and other protective governance measures that were deemed to interfere with EC competition law (Davey etal., 1976). Today, agricultural cooperatives (ACs) have a strong presence in the EU market, accounting for around half of all EU agricultural trade (Bijman etal., 2012). In 2011, the International Cooperative Alliance’s list of the top 300 cooperatives revealed that many of the biggest European cooperatives operate in the agricultural supply or food and drink sectors (ICA, 2011).

Cooperatives, regardless of the sector they operate in, are expected to work for the benefit of their members, show concern for their communities (including sustainable development) and promote cooperative economies. This book analyses to what extent this is happening in the case of ACs. Evidence of how unsustainable and unequal farming in Europe is, despite such a strong AC presence, raises questions about the role and practices of these cooperatives. Despite their grassroots origins, concerns from civil society and a handful of scholars suggest there is an increase in top–down approaches and corporatisation trends in the sector. This book examines ACs in the context of the EU/Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) framework, examining how the sector has evolved since its beginnings and analysing trends and factors shaping their current development.

Going beyond the economic perspective that dominates the study of ACs, this research also focuses on emerging, innovative multi-stakeholder governance models. The strategies used to protect their alterity as well as the diverse understandings of food sustainability that different types of cooperative have and how they reproduce these through their practices are analysed. Given the insufficient explanatory potential of existing theories to accommodate a wide range of realities labelled as cooperatives in food and farming, a new theoretical framework was developed based on the findings of this research. The multilevel framework unravels the different dimensions that constitute cooperatives and their degree of alterity and commitment to sustainable food practices and the wider cooperative movement.

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This book offers a critique of ACs beyond the dominant institutional economics lens, contributing to the debate on their de/repoliticisation. While acknowledging the important role ACs play in supporting farmers – many of those I spoke to during this research reported they could not survive without them – this book presents a solidary-critical approach (Favaro, 2017) through which to recognise and appreciate the often essential role ACs play in supporting individual farmer members, while still exploring difficult issues around co-optation that reveal a somehow uncomfortable, but potentially fruitful, analysis to help ACs move towards a fairer and more sustainable future.

Why study agricultural cooperatives? Relevance and timeliness

Why study ACs? Why is this topic relevant and worth researching? The history of food and farming cooperatives is intrinsically linked to the origins of the cooperative movement itself, although informal food provisioning practices based on cooperative relations long preceded the first formalised cooperative enterprises (Chloupkova etal., 2003; Sennett, 2012). The earliest records of cooperatives date back to 1750s France (Shaffer, 1999); soon after, other cooperatives emerged in Greece, Italy and Luxembourg (Shaffer, 1999; Naubauer, 2013). During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, adulteration, quality and price of food and farming inputs were shared concerns that drove the creation of both consumer and agricultural cooperatives (Rhodes, 2012).

More recently, in post-war Europe, the introduction of the Common Market brought about dramatic policy changes and started a heated period of cooperative formation following the abolition of existing marketing boards and other protective governance measures deemed to interfere with EC competition law (Davey etal., 1976). Today, ACs are promoted around the world as organisational mechanisms to increase lobby power for farmers (Fairtrade Foundation, 2011). There are many types of AC, with aims from machinery-sharing to processing and marketing. A clear benefit of ACs is that they not only help farmers concentrate demand to buy cheaper inputs in bulk, but also allow them to negotiate better prices when selling produce to large buyers. Low prices are a real concern for farmers in the agricultural market, as the profitability of farming activities has been progressively declining for decades in favour of the processing and retail sectors. Additionally, by being members of ACs, small-scale farmers can benefit from access to training and technologies that they would otherwise be unable to afford (Giagnocavo, 2012).

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Today, there are around 750,000 ACs across the world (Ortmann and King, 2007). Producer cooperatives are key to farming and account for a larger share of the cooperative economy than worker cooperatives (Wilson and MacLean, 2012). Agriculture is in fact the largest sector by annual cooperative turnover, with more than 39 per cent, or €347 billion, of the total annual cooperative turnover in Europe, followed by retail with nearly 30 per cent, or €264.38 billion (Cooperatives Europe, 2016).

There are tens of thousands of ACs in Europe, with Cogeca, the European body representing ACs, counting about 40,000 cooperatives on its books with a turnover of approximately €350 million (Cogeca, 2015). European ACs employ about 600,000 workers and have 9 million farmer members (Tortia etal., 2013). Large differences amongst member states exist, but, across the board, farmers’ cooperatives are a key actor in the EU food system, supplying more than 50 per cent of agricultural products and more than 60 per cent of the collection, processing and marketing of agricultural products (Cogeca, 2010). The average market share of all ACs in the EU is 40 per cent, or higher if “hybrid cooperatives” with non-farmer investors are taken into the calculation (Bijman etal., 2012). It is not a black and white picture, but the tendency is that in the north there are bigger, more consolidated single-sector ACs, some of which are multinational cooperatives; in the south, more local, even multisectorial cooperatives operate, but still a handful of big ACs at the top account for most of the cooperative trade (Bijman etal., 2012). The overall trend seems to be for increasing concentration, with fewer but bigger cooperatives and a growing number of transnational ACs with members in more than one country (Bijman etal., 2012). The year 2012 was the United Nations (UN) International Year of Cooperatives, celebrated with the motto “cooperatives can feed the world”. The question to ask was perhaps not whether ACs can feed the world, but at what price to consumers, the environment and small farmer members. This book investigates this question, trying to analyse why ACs are following a trend of growth and internationalisation and with what effects on their farmer members.

Their significance, not only in Europe but also across the world, is undeniable. However, despite their strong presence, the European farming problem is obvious at different levels:

• There is an increasingly high market concentration at producer, processor and retail level that creates power imbalances in the food system and asymmetrical bargaining powers (e.g. UK farmers only receive around 7 per cent of what consumers spend on food (Pretty, 2001), and around two-thirds of all food is sold by only four supermarkets (Morgan etal., 2015). In Europe, the top five retailers’ market share at national level (not necessarily the same five in each member state) exceeds 60 per cent in 13 member states (European Commission, 2014a).

• Concentration is also present in subsidy payments: 80 per cent of CAP subsidies go to 20 per cent of farmers, mainly for large, monoculture exploitations (BBC, 2013).

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• Agricultural land availability and affordability are rapidly decreasing: half of all farmland in the EU is now concentrated in the 3 per cent of large farms bigger than 100 hectares in size (European Union, 2012). At the same time, landownership is also concentrated (e.g. 70 per cent of UK land is owned by less than 1 per cent of the population (Home, 2009).

• Evidence of the environmental impacts of farming is piling up. Although statistics on the environmental impacts of the food system vary significantly depending on the source and the method of calculation (e.g. land cleared to cultivate feed, transport, etc.), they account for between 18 and 30 per cent of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to human activity (Garnett, 2014). Another sobering statistic is that around 20 per cent of global GHG emissions are produced by the animal husbandry sector alone (Steinfeld etal., 2006). These statistics reflect the impact of food production methods that are unsustainable both for the environment and for farmers (UNEP, 2009).

• Concerns over agricultural labour shortages and an ageing workforce are growing every year (European Union, 2011). One-third of European farmers are over 65 years old, and only 7 per cent are under 35 (European Commission, 2013a).

• There is a generalised disconnection of farming from consumers and the environment. Long supply chains mean consumers are very removed from their food and the people who produce it (Kneafsey etal., 2008). Inequalities in extent and quality of consumption have fuelled the spread of diet-related diseases and food banks (Gentilini, 2013).

This picture of unsustainable and unequal farming in Europe despite such a strong AC presence raises questions about the role and practices of these cooperatives. If ACs are supposed to represent members’ interests, why are the above challenges facing farmers becoming so acute? Cooperatives are not a legacy of the past, but more and more, especially since the beginning of the 2007–08 financial crisis, they seem to be a popular model for new enterprises, whether under conservative or socialist administrations (COCETA, 2012; CECOP, 2013; Co-operatives UK, 2013b). The year 2012 was the UN International Year of Cooperatives, from which the Blueprint for a Cooperative Decade emerged, setting up the vision for the movement until 2020. This international focus on cooperatives, coupled with the increasing interest and concerns about sustainability in food systems, makes the topic of this research invaluably timely.

Additionally, in terms of challenging taken-for-granted assumptions (Tracy, 2010), this research offers an insight into the world of ACs with findings that clash with well-established ideas or imaginaries about cooperatives and cooperative members. Evidence shows people have a positive view of cooperatives as more ethical businesses (Cooperativas Agro-alimentarias, 2013), many reporting a willingness to buy more or pay more for cooperatively produced items, as they believe there is an added ethical value in the way cooperatives operate (Cooperativas Agro-alimentarias, 2013). As this book will present, this imaginary can be no more than a halo effect in the dominant AC sector.

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Gaining understanding of the trends and dynamics within the AC sector is instructive; however, the utility of such an analysis is limited if it cannot be understood within the broader context of global food and farming systems in which the sector operates, as well as the pressing issue of food sustainability and the wider cooperative movement from which ACs emerged. This contextualisation has been addressed through a detailed overview of the history of the movement, a review of the literature on sustainable diets and current data on food and farming and ACs in Europe and a discussion...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Farmers’ Cooperatives and Sustainable Food Systems in Europe
• Other books in the Earthscan Food and Agriculture Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introducing Agricultural Cooperatives in the Context of a Failing Food System: Context, Clashing Definitions, Principles and Typologies
• 2 Past and Present: The Evolution of Agricultural Cooperatives in Europe from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century
• 3 Theorising Cooperativism and Food Sustainability: Disciplinary, Thematic and Chronological Streams
• 4 Why Methods and Theory Matter When Studying Cooperativism and Sustainability in Food and Farming: From Critical Approaches to Crystallisation
• 5 Experts’ Views on the European Policy Context: The Price of Remaining Competitive and Certifying Sustainability
• 6 Country cases – UK and Spain: From Workers’ Unions to the European Union
• 7 Consolidation of the Agricultural Cooperative Sector: From Farmway to Mole Valley Farm and Anecoop in the Sea Of Plastic
• 8 Emerging Models of Cooperation in Food and Farming: Multi-Stakeholder Cooperatives
• 9 Third Spaces: Fighting the Cooperative Corner and Interrogating the Alterity of Emerging Cooperative Models
• 10 Theoretical Implications: A New Integrated Framework for Deconstructing Agricultural Cooperatives
• 11 Conclusions: Implications for Agricultural Cooperatives, Food Policy and Alternative Food Initiatives
• Appendix I General Data on ACs in the EU
• Appendix II Why are Spain and the UK Two Interesting Case Studies to Compare?
• Appendix III Summary of Interviews by Country, Type of Actor and Organisation
• References
• Index