Journal of Rural Studies 78 (2020) 467–479

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Journal of Rural Studies

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jrurstud

An integrated conceptual framework for the study of agricultural

cooperatives: from repolitisation to cooperative sustainability
Raquel Ajates
Duncan of Jordanstone School of Art and Design, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Agricultural cooperatives (ACs) are major players in European farming, where they account for 40–60% of
Agricultural cooperatives agricultural trade, and are key actors in articulating rural realities. This paper offers a solidary critique of ACs
Cooperative sustainability beyond the dominant institutional economics lens, and aims to resume the debate on their de/repoliticisation.
cooperative hourglass
Evidence presented points towards a continuous process of co-optation of ACs by the dominant food regime as
Repolitisation
Epistemological biases
well as decreased adherence to cooperative principles, revealing theoretical parallelisms with the organic and
Cooperative movement fair trade movements. While acknowledging the important role ACs play in supporting farmers, many of who
Food policy interviewed for this research reported they could not survive without them, this paper warns of the loss of their
historical political roots, and introduces a new theoretical framework for a more integrated study of ACs in the
context of wider food system forces. The framework is composed of three conceptual components: first, the
coooperative triangle illustrates interwoven cooperative identitary dimensions; second, the cooperative hour­
glass depicts ongoing tensions between the cooperative economic and governance model, and the market
economy they exist in; and third, the concept of cooperative sustainability brings together the previous two
components to analyse ACs’ ability and capacity to maintain the dimensions indicated in the cooperative triangle
while also fostering environmental sustainability through their practices.

1. Introduction from machinery-sharing, to processing and marketing. ACs enable

Despite earlier records of farming cooperatives, it was not until 1852
Britain that the cooperative legal form entered the law for the first time
in history (Zeuli and Cropp, 2004). The cooperative movement emerged
with the aim of transforming society (Oakeshott, 1978; Birchall, 2010),
with some of the earliest cooperatives focusing on food and farming
activities (Ajates Gonzalez, 2017a). During the XIX and XX centuries,
diverse farmer cooperatives mushroomed across the European continent
(Birchall, 1994; Rhodes, 2012). More recently, in post war Europe, the
creation of the common market brought about numerous policy changes
that started a period of cooperative formation due to the abolition of
marketing boards and other protective governance measures that were
deemed to interfere with EC competition law (Davey et al., 1976).
Today, ACs have a strong presence in the EU market, accounting for
around half of all EU agricultural trade (Bijman et al., 2012). The biggest
cooperatives in Europe operate in the agricultural supply of food and
drink sectors (ICA, 2011; Cooperatives Europe, 2016).
ACs are promoted around the world as a way to increase lobby power
for farmers (Fairtrade Foundation, 2011). There are many types of ACs,
farmers to respond to power imbalances by pooling resources together to
maximise their purchasing and selling power. Additionally, by being
members of ACs, small-scale farmers benefit from access to training and
technologies that would be unable to access otherwise (Giagnocavo,
2012).
There are tens of thousands of ACs in Europe. The exact figure
however is not clear. 2012, the United Nations’ International Year of
Cooperatives celebrated under the moto of “Cooperatives can feed the
world", was the year of publication of the last exhaustive study of ACs in
Europe funded by the European Commission (Bijman et al., 2012). This
study composed of 77 reports, including 27 country reports, found a
large diversity of cooperative models across member states. COGECA,
the European body representing ACs, which also calls itself the General
Confederation of Agricultural Cooperatives in the European Union, of­
fers conflicting statistics on the number of ACs they represent. In the
About Us section of their website, they claimed to represent, at the time
of publication, “the general and specific interests of some 40,000
farmers’ cooperatives with 9 million members, employing some 660,000
people and with a global annual turnover in excess of three hundred

E-mail address: r.ajatesgonzalez@dundee.ac.uk.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2020.06.019
Received 23 September 2017; Received in revised form 29 May 2020; Accepted 3 June 2020
Available online 1 August 2020
0743-0167/© 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
R. Ajates
billion euros throughout the enlarged Europe” (COGECA, 2020); these
exact figures have been cited in earlier publications (Tortia et al., 2013;
Gaeta and Corsinovi, 2014), which seems to indicate this webpage has
not been updated for a few years. In their more recent publications
COGECA has reported decreased numbers: 6 million members of 22,000
cooperatives that provide employment to 600,000 people (WeFarm4EU,
2020), statistics that fit with current trends of mergers, acquisitions and
growing concentration in the AC sector (Bijman et al., 2012). Large
differences amongst member states continue to exist, but across the
board, ACs are key actors in the EU food system. The most recent
comprehensive review reported an average market share of of 40% or
higher for all ACs in the EU, including “hybrid cooperatives” with
non-farmer investors (Bijman et al., 2012). It is not a black and white
picture, but the tendency is for bigger and more consolidated single
sector ACs in Northern Europe, some of which are multinational co­
operatives; in the South of Europe, more local, even multisectorial co­
operatives operate, but still a handful of big ACs at the top account for
most of the cooperative trade (Bijman et al., 2012). The ongoing trend
points to further concentration, with fewer but larger cooperatives. As
food trade increases, transnational ACs with members in more than one
country are also increasing (Bijman et al., 2014). After this introduction
of the current AC landscape in the EU, the next section reviews the
dominant disciplinary lenses applied to the study of ACs, and how those
perspectives have shaped their development.
2. Cooperative capitalism? Disciplinary, thematic and
chronological streams in the literature on agricultural
cooperatives
There is wide range of realities in food and farming labeled as co­
operatives: from producers working together in more informal and not
legally incorporated associations (Vara S� anchez, 2008); other grassroots
models such as emerging agricultural workers’ cooperatives,
multi-stakeholder models in which consumers also become members
(Gray, 2014b; Ajates Gonzalez, 2017a) and Community Supported
Agriculture schemes; small village ACs that refuse to merge with the
neighbours, to the Producer Organisation (PO) model that will be dis­
cussed later (Bijman et al., 2012).
This research places the focus on conventional legally incorporated
ACs with a single membership composed of farmers only. I analyse if and
how these are trying to answer the pressing environmental questions
currently facing food system actors, as well as the social and political
challenges that the cooperative movement historically has strived to
solve. The bulk of scholarly literature dealing with conventional ACs
comes from the economics discipline (Gray, 2014a). Leaving behind the
early debates from the XIX and first half of the XX century revolving
around whether cooperatives could bring down the capitalist class sys­
tem (Oakeshott, 1978), the academic focus moved to the other end of the
spectrum towards the end of the last century: how could ACs be shaped
or mishaped to become as flexible (in terms of capital accumulation and
governance structures) as privately owned firms (POF) in order to
compete in an increasingly concentrated market? (Cook et al., 2004). In
a theoretical effort to fit ACs within one of the generic forms of economic
organisation, many authors applied economic theories to the study of
these organisations. Much has been written about the high transaction
costs of cooperative governance, mainly from a New Institutional Eco­
nomic (NIE) perspective (Karantininis and Nilsson, 2007).
The majority of journal papers and academic books reviewed for this
research studied the performance of ACs as an inefficient business model
unfit to survive in a competitive market due to its costly democratic
decision-making processes, risk-averse nature and long-term investment
approaches. This bulk of the literature on ACs can be categorised by
their two main aims: a) identification of the model’s weaknesses and b)
recommending strategies to overcome them (see Murray, 1983; Ousta­
passidis, 1988; Ortmann and King, 2007). For a detailed account of the
advances on economics cooperative theory since the 1990s, the work of
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Journal of Rural Studies 78 (2020) 467–479
Cook and colleagues is recommended (Cook et al., 2004). In contrast,
some authors have championed economic counter-arguments providing
evidence of the financial resilience of the cooperative model (Ostrom,
1990; Sanchez Bajo and Roelants, 2011).
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, a large body of literature on
ACs emerged focusing on analysing the “New Generation Cooperatives”
(NGCs) that started to emerge in the US during the late 1980s as a
survival strategy to overcome the financial crisis they were encountering
at the time. Whilst traditional cooperatives focused on production and
countervailing market power, NGCs appeared as a more entrepreneurial
and market-oriented model specialising on value-added activities. NGCs
adopted liberalised models of governance and external investment, and
took cooperative activities downstream the food chain (Merret and
Walzer, 2004). The promotion of this hybrid identity (Chaddad, 2009)
and of competitive NGCs as the only way to survive in the sector
weakened members’ resistance to change, who concerned about
collapse, accepted the conversion of many ACs to NGC structures
(Stofferahn, 2010).
During the years just before and after the turn of the XX century,
several authors proposed the US model of the corporate NGCs as the way
forward for European ACs (see Harris et al., 1996; Van Bekkum and van
Dijk, 1997; Cook and Iliopoulos, 1999; Fulton, 2000; Van Bekkum,
2001; Goldsmith and Kane, 2002; Iliopoulos, 2005). Since 2007, perhaps
due by the effects of the last financial crisis, the literature shows a
growing concern for the increasing de-socialisation of cooperatives,
placing an emphasis on the importance of social capital (see Somerville,
2007; Go �mez Lo �pez, 2009; Bijman et al., 2010; Feng et al., 2011; Mul­
queen, 2011; Whyman, 2012; Nilsson et al., 2012; Jones and Kalmi,
2012; Kasabov, 2016).
Very few authors have written about ACs’ struggles to adhere to
cooperative principles while surviving in the neoliberal and political
context they exist in. Mooney’s farsighted papers from 1995, 1996 and
2004 discussed ACs’ depolitisation through the reprivatisation discourse
of neoclassical economics, which was pushing ACs to achieve more
financial competitiveness by becoming more capital-centred rather than
people-centred (Mooney et al., 1996). Mooney evidenced the necessity
to reclaim ACs as organisations with the potential to legitimise and
sustain class struggles, tackle power imbalances and improve workers’
conditions (Mooney, 2004). In his view, cooperatives can help farmers
regain power in the food system while (and because of) raising contra­
dictions at different levels: (1) in social relations, between production
and consumption; (2) spatial relations, between the local and the global;
and (3) collective action, between cooperatives as both traditional as
well as new social movements. Mooney frames ACs as spaces for those
contradictions and tensions to emerge, become visible and provide
innovative solutions. From this perspective, these tensions emerge as
moments of opportunity, in contrast to the neoclassical economics
model that simply presents them as barriers to profit-making efficiency
(Mooney, 2004:81).
Few authors since then have written about the increasing ‘corpora­
tisation’ of ACs. Szabo has described ACs as a self-defence mechanism
against corporations (Szab� o, 2006). In their study of cooperatives in
Scotland, Wilson and MacLean concluded that AC members are ‘moti­
vated primarily by individualism and survival rather than shared or
co-operative values’ (Wilson and MacLean, 2012:535).
ACs have also been touched upon when discussing contemporary
peasant farming (Van der Ploeg, 2013). Van der Ploeg has written about
the evolution of ACs since the beginning of XX century when co­
operatives were ‘class based’ and ‘still offered the promise of an effective
countervailing power’, to the present, when he notes ‘today the situation
is very different. Former cooperatives have evolved into entities that
treat peasants in the same way as food empires’ (Van der Ploeg,
2013:84). Food studies scholars have focused more on the study of
consumer cooperatives rather than EU farmers’ cooperatives. When ACs
do appear in this literature, they often do so as a preferred model for
shorter food chains and alternative food network discourses (Lamine,
R. Ajates
2005; Guzma �n and Mielgo, 2007; Hingley et al., 2011). The most
common themes covered in this stream of literature include: the coop­
erative model as a tool to create new, alternative ways of buying or
producing food (Guzm� an and Mielgo, 2007; Little et al., 2010; Calle
Collado and Soler Montiel, 2012); and ACs as a tool to foster rural
development (Merrett and Walzer, 2004; Seyfang, 2006; Moragues-Faus
and Sonnino, 2012). Overall, the literature on ACs is mainly reduc­
tionist, as it tends to provide either economic or sociological analysis
(the latter in very few cases), ignoring the ongoing wider tensions, di­
lemmas and contradictions in the movement (Gray, 2014b).
More recently, Emery (2015) and Stock et al. (2014) have identified
the relation between neoliberal conceptions of autonomy, independence
and their effects on ACs. In turn, Gray has discussed how many AC have
become large bureaucratic organisations in their own right, shifting
cooperative governance models away from economic democracy and
toward IOF models that emphasise the needs of capital over the needs of
members (Gray, 2014b). Bijman and colleagues have also noticed the
evolving changes in ACs’ governance structures motivated by the need
to enhance market orientation, attract professional managers,
strengthen member commitment and reinforce entrepreneurship (Bij­
man et al., 2014).
In 2017, the Journal for Rural Studies published a special issue on
The more-than-economic dimensions of cooperation in food production, with
a special focus on conventional agricultural cooperatives and the
complexity of processes and values involved in cooperation (Emery
et al., 2017). In this issue, several authors considered the inescapable
tensions between individual and collective interests in ACs (Emery et al.,
2017; Forney and H€ aberli, 2017; Wynne-Jones, 2017; Ajates Gonzalez,
2017b). Here, I discussed how multi-stakeholder cooperatives with a
diverse membership of growers, workers and consumers can help co­
operatives remain true to their principles and members by direct
accountability and having to accommodate different interests rather
than ignoring them (Ajates Gonzalez, 2017b).
Forney and Ha €berli argued in the same issue against reductionist
dichotomies and simplified notions of hybridisation between two poles
of ‘traditional’ and ‘corporatised’ cooperatives as they can fail to reveal
the multiplicity of motivations different members might bring to the
table and help produce and reproduce in their cooperatives. This paper
agrees that avoiding dichotomies is a very worthwile approach to move
the analysis of ACs forward and to work towards the shared vision that
Fonte and Cucco (2017) proposed for an ideal future in which co­
operatives operating in alternative food networks and well stablished
farmers’ organisations join efforts and activities. Nevertheless, I argue
that there has not been enough research to unpack how and in what
ways ACs are moving away from being a transformative movement to
being reduced as a tool to survive market developments. This research
opts for a solidary-critical approach (Favaro, 2017) through which to
acknowledge and appreciate the important 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. Highlighting the tensions between ACs’ practices and co­
operatives’ survival is important from different perspectives:
- From a consumer perspective, there is an imperative to provide a fair
and realistic picture of ACs to consumers. Consumers perceive ACs in
a positive manner as they assume farmers’ cooperatives are more
ethical and value-led than private companies (Cooperativas
Agro-alimentarias, 2013). There is a responsibility to provide an
accurate picture of ACs’ practices rather than surround them in a
cooperative halo effect.
- From a state/policy maker perspective, there is an urgent need to
inform the best approach to foster cooperation amongst farmers in
order to design effective subsidy policies that do not direct public
funds towards farmers’ organisations that might be reproducing the
wrong kind of unequal cooperation, as it will be discussed later in
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Journal of Rural Studies 78 (2020) 467–479
reference to the increasing importance of POs and ACs in the EU with
effects in lower income countries (Berthelot, 2012).
- From an AC studies perspective, global market and agrifood industry
forces need to be taken into account, as they shape the room for
manvure ACs have in their practices and business models. Economic
studies of ACs at the organisational level do not normally include
these contextual wider dynamics. The question is how farmers and
ACs can be supported to survive market and industry forces without
losing their voice as members, and without risking the environ­
mental sustainability and viability of their farms.
To address the above points, the paper is structured as follows: the
next section describes the research methods followed by the presenta­
tion and discussion of findings structured in five key themes in Section 4:
namely, legal and governance dimensions, ACs as part of a wider
cooperative social movement, cooperative education and environmental
sustainability. Section 5 starts with the theoretical implications of the
findings, followed by the introduction of a new theoretical and analyt­
ical framework composed by three components: the cooperative triangle
that acknowledges different manifestations of ACs as organisations, and
the double cooperative hourglass that situates ACs in the wider power
dynamics of the food system. The third component is the concept of
cooperative sustainability, which brings together the previous two
components to analyse the sustainability of the cooperative identity as
well as the environmental sustainability AC can achieve through their
practices. The final section, 6 offers some conclusions and suggestions
for further research and potential applications of the introduced theo­
retical framework.
3. Applied research methods
The framework presented in this paper applies primarily to mar­
keting and supply ACs, but it is also applicable to other ACs such as
machinery ones. This research was designed to acknowledge the great
deal of diversity in ACs in Europe and sought a wide range of viewpoints
from small, medium and large cooperatives as well as Southern and
Northern European perspectives. The focus is on European ACs,
excluding eastern European cooperatives from the trends identified in
the paper, as the specific historical baggage of these countries has
pushed for the creation of POs, which have shaped agricultural policies
affecting ACs in the rest of Europe (Bijman et al., 2012). Different
sources of data were collected and analysed:
1. Industry and civil society publications and reports.
2. Interview data with scientists, policy makers, civil society and
members of ACs (31 interviews in total).
3. An analysis of policy documents such as legislation and official
publications from public authorities, industry bodies and civil soci­
ety organisations (European Commission, COGECA, Plunkett Foun­
dation, International Cooperative Alliance and International
Cooperative Agricultural Organisation (ICAO), Via Campesina and
Scottish Agricultural Organisation Society (SAOS)).
4. Other data from industry and civil society available in the public
domain (such as submissions to government consultations, e-news­
letters, media articles and ACs’ website content).
The interviews were stopped when data showed signs of reaching
saturation point. NVivo software was used to carry out a thematic
analysis of the data.
An integrated food policy approach was applied to position ACs
within the wider food system (Lang et al., 2009). This approach involved
interviewing cooperative experts outside ACs, from civil society,
academia and government. A wide range of informants and sources of
data were consulted to offer a variety of different stakeholder groups’
perspectives on the topic. This wider lens avoided replicating previous
narrow approaches from the economics literature that mainly focused
R. Ajates
on interviewing cooperative members and managers, and constrained
the level of analysis at the organisational unit, ignoring other key forces
and players in the food system.
4. Full or skimmed? Agricultural cooperatives in Europe
This section presents the findings from the document and interview
data under the five main themes that emerged from the analysis, used
below as headings: legal dimension, governance issues, cooperatives as
part of a social movement, cooperative education and environmental
sustainability.
4.1. Legal forms and cooperatives: a dilution of the cooperative spirit?
Before presenting the data related to this theme, it is worth reviewing
the official definition of cooperative (across economic sectors and ac­
tivities) promoted by the International Cooperative Allicance (ICA):
‘an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet
their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations
through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise’
(ICA, 1995)
Nevertheless, many working definitions of ACs exist, and the ones
currently used by the European Commission and national cooperative
organisations in different European countries contrast with the ICA
definition. The former often fail to mention social and cultural needs,
and in contrast to the ICA definition, focus instead solely on economic
objectives. For example, Cooperatives UK - the national trade body that
campaigns for co-operation and aims to promote cooperative enterprises
in the UK – defines ACs in the following way:
‘enterprise co-operatives formed by individual commercial farmers
working together in order to meet shared economic needs and ach­
ieve common economic goals’ (Co-operatives, 2014:2)
To complicate matters further, a variety of legal forms also exist. A
model of farmers’ associations that has grown rapidly in the last few
years is that of Producer Organisations (POs). POs are economic orga­
nisations of agricultural producers (or fishermen) with characteristics
similar to those of cooperatives (Bijman et al., 2012). EU legislation
explicitly states that a PO can adopt any legal entity; a PO may have the
legal form of a cooperative, but in many cases it has not, either because
the legal requirements for cooperatives pose many restrictions on the
activities and the structure of the PO, or, as it happens in countries that
have transformed from a socialist state economy, because the term
cooperative has negative connotations (Bijman et al., 2012).
In order to access EU subsidies, POs operating in the fruit and
vegetable sector are required to adopt democratic decision-making
similar to cooperatives. However, other sectors such as hops, olive oil
and table olives (for which POs were recognised in 2007) and the dairy
sector (POs recognised in March 2012), are only described in terms of
their function in increasing farmers’ bargaining power with no mention
to ownership or governance models (Bijman et al., 2012).
POs are normally included in EU reports of agricultural cooperation
even though not all POs are registered cooperatives. Accurate statistics
are not available due to the existence of POs with governance models
similar to cooperatives, and of many hybrids with structures in between
cooperatives and private companies (Bijman et al., 2012). In countries
such as Belgium and the Netherlands, known for their large and
corporate-like cooperatives, the market share of POs in marketing fruit
and vegetables is higher than that of formal cooperatives (Bijman et al.,
2010).
POs are also generally supported by COGECA, (which represents
fisheries cooperatives too); however as one of their directives
mentioned, these new legal form creates internal tensions, as POs can
present a risk to existing powerful cooperatives:
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Journal of Rural Studies 78 (2020) 467–479
“If we set up a competing structure better than cooperative x1] the
investment that this cooperative and the farmers have put into
[cooperative x] would be endangered and we cannot accept this
because we also represent [cooperative x]” (COGECA directive).
Interviewees and reports consulted suggest increases in size are also
a trend, as ACs are responding to external market tensions by becoming
bigger:
“Cooperatives [are] becoming stronger in the market place and
becoming bigger; it is not necessarily 100% that if you become bigger
you are stronger and vice versa, but it seems to be the tendency.”
(Cogeca directive)
The pressure to become larger comes not only from competition in
the EU market, but also from the concentrated and powerful retail sector
(Ajates, 2019). Originally, farmers used to join ACs to get more bar­
gaining power when negotiating with buyers, and to be able to afford
inputs and processing infrastructure; nowadays, this relationship is
turning, as this quote from the Scottish Agricultural Association Society
representative ilustrates:
“We found that the concentration in the food processing sector has
increased a great deal in the last few years, and that has meant that
many of our coops have merged and consolidated into larger busi­
nesses so that they can supply food processors all year round” (SAOS
rep.)
The above quotes reflect how currently ACs fit well the logistics
needs of large supermarkets by concentrating production. ACs also work
as easy entry points to get big groups of farmers to adopt specific stan­
dards to meet supermarkets’ own lines requirements and product
traceability (Giagnocavo et al., 2017). The cost to the cooperative model
is that ACs and POs are increasingly opting for legal models that allow
growth strategies similar to those of private owned companies (Bijman
et al., 2012), at the expense of members’ loss of control, and of new
farmers who trade with the cooperative but are not always offered the
chance to become members (Berthelot, 2012) or able to take part in
decision making (Mwambi et al., 2020).
A representative from Via Campesina framed these issues as a sign of
the transformative shortcomings of the cooperative legal model:
“(T)he legal model has failed. It does not respond to its original
needs. And principally because the cooperative movement has not
addressed the transformation of society and being islands in the
framework of the capitalist economy and in the end, in order to
compete they have to enter in the same contradictions characteristic
of private companies […] and for their own members, the AC does
not represent a big difference from the other agro-export com­
panies.” (Via Campesina rep.)
The issue of large cooperatives’ behaviour mimicking that of private
companies, and making farmer members feel detached from their own
ACs with a reduced sense of ownership and control, is not specific to a
particular sector (Hanisch and Rommel, 2012). Furthermore, as a
representative from the Plunkett Foundation pointed out, the CAP has
fuelled polarisation in farming, rewarding both larger farms and larger
ACs with fewer but larger members. Consolidation in this sense can be
seen a barrier hindering the regeneration of the sector:
"[…] it is difficult for new cooperatives to form because there is that
massive incentive for POs of a certain scale than for a smaller orga­
nisation that is below that lower limit, trying to emerge and trying to
be useful but they are at massive competitive disadvantage, so what
1
Cooperative name removed for data confidentiality reasons.
R. Ajates
we have seen is very few new cooperatives formed over that period".
(Plunkett Foundation rep.)
Another interviewee pointed out how by inserting themselves in the
market of a capitalist economy, cooperatives eventually stop
cooperating:
“If we take advantage of the legal form, the economic entity that says
the cooperative is for profiting, then we enter another type of ra­
tionality which is not the cooperative one, but a corporate rationality
focused on economic benefits, mere profiteering, which is exactly
what the cooperative model tries to avoid. A cooperative is not made
for profiteering. A cooperative reproduces itself socially and
economically. Then, when that rationality and therefore the ethics
that underlay that rationality break, the essence of the existence of
the cooperative breaks with it.” (Academic with expertise in coop­
erative studies (1))
4.2. Governance: the skimming of the cooperative principles
Cooperatives in all sectors are expected to adhere to the seven
internationally recognised principles: 1. Voluntary and Open Member­
ship, 2. Democratic Member Control, 3. Member Economic Participa­
tion, 4. Autonomy and Independence, 5. Education, Training, and
Information, 6. Cooperation among Cooperatives and 7. Concern for
Community (ICA, 2015). These principles illustrate how cooperatives
should put their values into practice, which is what differentiates them
from privately owned business (ICA, 2015). However, during the 1980s
and 1990s, global markets, including food trade ones, started to become
more open, a trend that culminated with the incorporation of agriculture
in the World Trade Organisation in 1994/95. At that time, arguments for
a simplification of the cooperative principles were put forward in order
to “allow” ACs to be more competitive and attract large farmers
(Birchall, 2005); critics claimed that the ICA principles were too
restrictive, and that ICA principles were only guidelines for cooperative
structures for members to choose which principle they wished to adhere
to (Zeuli and Cropp, 2004). In the US, the rapid rate of conversions of
ACs to private companies (Stofferahn, 2010), led to an interest in
delineating the differences between ACs and private companies with the
aim of protecting the cooperative identity, promoting the cooperative
advantage and the value of being member-focused (Dunn, 1988; Barton,
1989; Torgerson et al., 1997). As a result, in 1987 the United States
Department of Agriculture (USDA, 2002) adopted the following three
principles for ACs (Ortmann and King, 2007):
1. The User-Owner Principle: Those who own and finance the cooper­
ative are those who use the cooperative.
2. The User-Control Principle: Those who control the cooperative are
those who use the cooperative.
3. The User-Benefits Principle: The cooperative’s sole purpose is to
provide and distribute benefits to its users on the basis of their use.
While the User principles excluded the education, community and
wider cooperative movement principles of ICA, still championed them as
“practices” that could facilitate a deeper application of the three prin­
ciples (Dunn, 1988). However, ten years later, in 1997, the Rural Busi­
ness Cooperative Service of the USDA, published their research report
151 titled: “Strengthening ethics within agricultural cooperatives”,
following a series of meetings with industry at which ongoing concerns
were raised about the weakening ethics in farmer cooperatives (USDA,
1997). This USDA research report reinforced the skimmed version of the
cooperative principles, stating that:
“Ethical decisions in cooperatives, then, should reflect recognition
and commitment to the user-control, user-benefit, and user-owner
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Journal of Rural Studies 78 (2020) 467–479
principles. Decisions that violate these three central tenets should
be viewed as unethical” (USDA, 1997)
Years later, the USDA published a research report (n. 231) comparing
the cooperative principles of the USDA and the ICA, sharing some re­
flections on the reductionist approach of the former (USDA, 2014). In
this review, the USDA author, Bruce J. Reynolds, an economist, dis­
cusses how the USDA three principles were a “reduced form approach”
developed through the “lens of economics” and prepared by economists
to exclude values from the definition and identification of cooperatives
(USDA, 2014:3). The paradox of removing values from the cooperative
principles to emphasise their economic edge is that, as Reynolds points
out, it results in the dilution of the ethical and social essence of the
cooperative identity itself:
"Economists avoid asserting social values, yet this cautiousness when
applied to principles may exclude attributes that contribute to
further differentiating cooperatives from other forms of organisa­
tion" (USDA, 2014:3).
This partiality for market advantages that are easier to measure and
quantify than social values and impacts will be discussed later as one of
the biases that determine how the ‘success’ of ACs is measured, and how
this is shaping the way the AC sector reproduces itself. The repercussions
of the diluted cooperative principles spread beyond the US. As discussed
in the introduction, the user principles reached Europe and were pro­
moted at the turn of the century and are still used today (USDA, 2014).
The 2012 European-wide Support for Farmers’ Cooperatives study
commissioned by the European Commission defined cooperatives by
listing the three principles proposed by the USDA in the 80s (Bijman
et al., 2012), perpetuating the skimming of the ICA principles.
The fact is that not only the ICA principles are not part of European
ACs, but many relevant actors do not event expect ACs’ farmer members
to be aware of them:
“And I would be surprised if they did. […] I would be astonished if
most farmers were aware of them individually, or that they would
have learnt from them somewhere, or if they were on the wall of First
Milk who are currently on the headlines, saying here are the prin­
ciples; well, it isn’t. They see them very much as cooperatives that
give them some commercial advantage, some edge, some ability to
withstand the shocks long term.” (UK policy maker)
“The short answer to that is that they are not aware of the principles
and particularly, the sort of community and all the other stuff,
because it’s … what most farmers have now started to do essentially,
is to work on the basis of they buy what is easily available and at the
best price they can get it. And those two things apply. And I think
that’s where we are at.” (Farmway member)
The distancing from the cooperative principles and the pressure to
find competitive strategies to deal with market liberalisation, globali­
sation, changing consumer preferences, and enhanced vertical and
horizontal competition have made cooperatives feel the need to
"strengthen the autonomy of the management, reduce member influence
on operational decisions, find new sources of equity capital, and pro­
fessionalise the supervisory bodies" Bijman et al., 2014: 658). As Bijman
as highlighted, "outside investors and outside experts can strengthen the
market position and thereby the sustainability of the cooperative, but
need to be institutionalised in a governance mechanism that facilitates
the harmonisation of member and firm interests" (Bijman et al., 2014:
659). Reports of lower levels of trust, participation and commitment to
ACs are being reported, both from members of ACs as well as from new
entries into farming who avoid joining cooperatives (Kontogeorgos
et al., 2017; Ajates, 2019). These concerns came through in some of the
interviews. Several cooperative members consulted were frustrated with
the increasing corporatisation of their ACs and the loss of cooperative
principles, but they also reported they could not remain in farming
R. Ajates
without the support of their cooperatives. A representative from the
Soberania Alimentaria magazine in Spain put it in these words:
“even people very embedded in classic cooperativism models have
the same critical reflection […] “it’s gone out of hand”, “we no
longer have control over cooperatives”. They don’t know well why,
but they criticise them because they’re in the hands of directives,
that cooperatives have grown too much, that cooperatives only have
their eyes on large exporting targets, that cooperatives have been the
entry door for the green revolution, that have been the entry door for
GM” (Soberania Alimentaria rep.)
The link between cooperatives and environmental sustainability is
discussed later on in the paper, but first, I consider how the governance
dimension and cooperative principles are interwoven with a weakened
association between the cooperative social movement and cooperative
education.
4.3. Social movement
Despite being based in Europe, many European ACs’ operations and
practices have effects internationally (Bijman et al., 2012; Berthelot,
2012). Some authors have argued that the legal incorporation of co­
operatives decreased their political engagement and their identity as an
international social movement (Mulqueen, 2011), a trend that has been
aggravated by the neoclassical economics discourse (Mooney et al.,
1996). The effect has been noted by the wider cooperative movement:
“In developed countries, ACs are very focussed on their business. I
know they used to be very strong members of the ICA, but the ICA
could not provide any profit for their business, so they withdrew all
their members, so we don’t have many ACs in Europe […] Specially
in the EU there is the CAP, so in the European regions, ACs are more
concerned about the CAP and they want to be more involved in the
lobbying and the decision making in the EU.” (ICAO rep)
A policy maker actually realised during an interview that “some of
the cooperatives out there are in effect a slightly evolved version of a
trade association” (UK policy maker). This instrumentalist reading of
cooperatives is something that the Scottish Agricultural Organisation
Society (SAOS) had also noticed in Scotland:
“the primary purpose if it is a grain coop, is to make the best return to
the farmer for his grain. That is the reason why he wants to work
together with other farmers because he thinks he can do that better
and more effectively in a coop than doing it on his own.” (SAOS rep.)
A UK policy maker agreed with this view:
“They see them very much as cooperatives that give them some
commercial advantage, some edge, some ability to withstand the
shocks long term” (UK policy maker)
The pursuit of growth regardless of the impacts on members and
nature reflects both anthropocentric and ethnocentric biases (P�erez
Neira and Soler Montiel, 2013), as noted by one interviewee:
“if you want to portrait [the biases] in today’s cooperativism, that is
it: disregarding other cultures, only wanting to grow and practise
agricultures that abuse nature. Then, cooperativism also, it is not a
separate entity. What we have it is the fruit, the reflection of the
model of society, of course” (Soberania Alimentaria magazine rep.)
Evidence of the ethnocentric bias is not new. From the 1950s on­
wards, the ICA became an active promoter of cooperatives as a devel­
opmental tool in developing countries, but critics have pointed out how
this effort had a paternalistic Euro-centric approach (Rhodes, 2012).
Strong links between colonialism and globalisation in food systems
perpetuate dominant food regimes (Friedmann, 2005). In the case of
ACs, these links are a serious issue when top-down ACs are promoted by
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Journal of Rural Studies 78 (2020) 467–479
both the EU farming industry and governments in less developed
countries. Cases of land grabbing and exploitation of workers by large
European ACs in lower income countries have been reported (Berthelot,
2012). This ICAO representative’s quote reflects just how current the
colonialist baggage is:
“they [European ACs] are focusing on their own business, on the
CAP. But individually they are also interested in supporting and
providing some benefits to the agricultural cooperative movement in
developing countries but their connection is with their past colonised
countries. The UK has some programmes with countries in Africa
that used to be their colonies. In Norway and other regions they also
have connections.” (ICAO rep.)
These ACs are created through top-down approaches, negating the
intrinsic democratic and bottom-up spirit of the cooperative movement:
“in developing countries is mostly top-down. It is quite normal these
days, the top-down […]. It is very difficult to have more bottom-up
processes in the developing countries. They do not understand the
system of the cooperatives, because a cooperative is not just a busi­
ness, it is a democracy. But in many developing countries, farmers
and proprietors they don’t think they are the owners, they are just
users, but in the cooperative they are the owners and users of the
business” (ICAO rep.)
This is not a new development, but a decades-long trend in which
government and aid agencies have injected money in developing
countries with a view to establish a cooperative sector in the absence of a
bottom-up cooperative movement (Develtere, 1992). More recently,
other authors have provided further evidence of this bias in low income
countries, where poorer cooperative members and especially women
suffer inequalities in ACs dominated by larger land-owners and foreign
interests (GeoSAS, 2012; Griffiths, 2012; Huggins, 2014). In Rwanda,
Huggins found that farmers no longer had control over the crops culti­
vated or inputs invested and were told by their cooperatives what crops
to grow (Huggins, 2014). These concerns were shared by farmers I
interviewed in Europe; two of them mentioned how their ACs would
strongly suggest to them what varieties of cherry they should use, always
pushing for varieties that produced a bigger cherry even if the flavour
was worse than those of traditional local varieties, and even if the new
varieties were not adapted to the local climate and pests.
ACs are increasingly instructing members what crops to grow, what
varieties and what growing methods they should use (Ajates, 2019).
Civil society groups have warned of the level of power concentration in
the sector. There also concerns around the intensive monoculture ap­
proaches that ACs are instructing their members to adopt, mainly to
standardise and increase production, moving away from the original
cooperative objective of transforming the world, to merely adapting to
and reproducing the system they operate in (Soberania Alimentaria,
2013).
Furthermore, European ACs are increasingly looking for new mar­
kets. This focus on globalisation and on using ACs as a way to concen­
trate production for getting food out of domestic markets and into export
markets severely clashes with relocalisation efforts of the food sover­
eignty movement.
This section has provided evidence that challenges the widespread
assumption that ACs are part of a global movement aiming to transform
society into a more cooperative one. The movement is not homogenous,
at least not as ACs are concerned. It has also revealed the ethnocentric
bias underlying the more corporate practices of large European ACs that
are exporting a neoliberal version of the cooperative model to devel­
oping countries.
4.4. Cooperative education
The data revealed concerns about the lack of cooperative education
R. Ajates
in ACs. During the XX century, the professionalisation of farming facil­
itated ACs becoming a global phenomenon. In Europe, multilevel food
policies have been rewarding the consolidation of the cooperative (and
PO) sector with fewer but larger players for years (Bijman et al., 2012).
Smaller farmers seeking alternative routes are having to reinvent the
cooperative model or/and seek help and funding from civil society or­
ganisations (Ajates Gonzalez, 2017). Interviewees reported a spread
disregard for maintaining the cooperative vision alive amongst mem­
bers. The issues of short-term cooperative memory worsens through
generations. A rural sociologist interviewed as part of this research
framed it as a participation deficit issue:
“The issue is that if you don’t participate in the origin, the birth of an
initiative, and especially when it is born from resistance, and that
oppression is experienced, and that gives way to social creativity that
allows that initiative to emerge, and in this case of cooperative x, of
course, you inherit all that ready-made work” (Academic with
expertise in cooperative studies (1)).
This is in line with other studies’ findings that suggest farmers are
delegating the act of cooperating to professional managers (Wilson and
MacLean, 2012; Bijman et al., 2014). The relationship between this
reductionist understanding of professionalisation and the lack of coop­
erative training is well reflected in this quote:
“it is very easy in a coop as it becomes more complex in its opera­
tions, for the technical and managerial staff to start dominating. And
not to invest in reproducing the solidaristic elements from which
often coops have emerged. And the question is, how long it takes for
that development to happen. I think the reproduction of the spirit of
cooperation is the hardest challenge in any of the coops I have ever
worked” (Academic with expertise in cooperative studies (2))
For further evidence on the loss of cooperative education and iden­
tify in ACs, see Ajates, 2019.
4.5. Environmental sustainability
The literature review revealed the lack of peer-reviewed evidence on
cooperatives being more environmentally friendly than their private
counterparts. Only one academic paper was found discussing their
environmental advantages (Baranchenko and Oglethorpe, 2012). ICA
and SAOS have also claimed cooperatives offer more sustainable busi­
ness models not only socially, but also environmentally (ICA, 2011 and
SAOS, 2017). However, more recent studies have identified that most
sustainability evaluation models for cooperatives do not address sus­
tainability in an integrated way, with a predominance of economic and
social aspects and a neglect for environmental dimensions (Marcis,
2019).
Originally, when the European Common Market was formed, the
main concern for policy makers revolved around modernising farming
systems to increase yields. At the time, ACs took the initiative in tech­
nical research, transferring the risk from farmer to cooperative entities,
and supporting small farmers to meet EU requirements and be able to
access new markets (Giagnocavo, 2012). Cooperatives are still key in
introducing their small-scale members to technical advances, such as
new machinery, greenhouses, etc. (Go �mez Lo�pez, 2004; Giagnocavo,
2012). This can be seen on a positive or negative light as ACs act as entry
points for different types of technology and inputs, including some
controversial innovations such as GM or intensive growing methods.
The following quote is from a member of a small multi-stakeholder
cooperative producing sheep milk products in the Basque Country.
The quote refers to the previous ACs the farmer had been a member of
and exposes the power ACs have over the growing methods of their
members:
"[…] supply cooperatives whose businesses are linked to a livestock
production model, and at the end of the day, they even promoted
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Journal of Rural Studies 78 (2020) 467–479
industrial farming because that was what they were making a living
from, from selling concentrated feed". (Esnetik member 1).
Another interviewee raised a similar point:
"There are a lot of big coops around the world that you would not
hold up as examples of environmental sustainability, there are some
that provide multiple offers for their products in order to be able to
sell farmers lots of fertilisers and financial products etc. but, I’m
absolutely adamant that coops help farmers to change, not all
farmers want to change […] but coops are a legitimate voice for
farmers, so they are the voice of Openfield farmers but they are also a
way of farmers telling each other what’s coming and what’s
happening, so I think in terms of the environment, coops absolutely
have a leadership role to say, ok, this is coming, there’s massive
instability in financial markets, there’s massive instability in terms of
weather patterns, in terms of commodity prices, all of this, all of this
instability is a massive problem, are there ways of farmers doing
things differently in order to help with that?" (Plunkett Foundation
rep.)
However, not addressing sustainability in an integrated way results
in a predominance of economic and social aspects and a neglect for
environmental dimensions (Marcis, 2019). Some interviewees
mentioned the barriers to transform to organic production as their ACs
could not, or would not accommodate small volumes of organic pro­
duce, as it did not make business sense. In this context, Fonte and Cucco
have discussed how a lack of a shared common vision is holding back
and polarising the smaller social solidarity cooperatives; the authors
indicate that large and well-established ACs have not been able or
willing to acknowledge the “environmental question posted to the
development of agriculture”, and have not given the steps to change
their practices accordingly (Fonte and Cucco, 2017). COPA-COGECA’s
reaction to the newly published European Commission’s Biodiversity
and Farm to Fork Strategies (COPA-COGECA, 2020) shows that financial
performance is still prioritised over environmental sustainability.
At the end of 2012, the International Labour Organisation (ILO)
updated its guidelines for cooperative legislation. The updated book, in
its third edition, was authored by Hagen Henrÿ and was based upon the
ILO’s Recommendation 193 on the Promotion of Cooperatives. The
motto of the book ‘Co-operative enterprises build a better world, but co-
operatives cannot – and must not - save the world’, emphasises that co­
operatives should not be seen simply as a panacea in crisis situations
(Henrÿ, 2012). This quote and the data presented in this section raise
several questions: How can cooperatives provide a balance between
short term and long-term objectives? Are the cooperative legal and
governance models able to help or balance the human and policy
weakness for short-term rewards? Or are we expecting too much of
cooperatives by suggesting they should encourage members to adopt
more environmentally friendly and fairer farming? Are cooperatives just
suffering from policy stretching, being expected to do too many things,
ethically, and save the world?
This section has presented the five main themes and tensions that
emerged from the data. Next, we discuss how these findings can inform
the theoretical refinement in the study of ACs in a number of ways.
5. Theoretical implications: a new analytical framework for
deconstructing agricultural cooperatives
The literature review and data presented have revealed that domi­
nant economic approaches to study and generate policies for ACs are at
their best limited, at their worse, damaging the cooperative movement,
farmers and the environment. Informed by the findings of this research,
in this section I propose a new framework based on a multi-level and
multidimensional theorisation of agricultural cooperation beyond the
dominant reductionist economic analysis. This framework builds on
Patrick Mooney’s work on tensions in ACs (Mooney and Majka, 1995,
R. Ajates Journal of Rural Studies 78 (2020) 467–479

2004) and contributes to what Mooney called “a sociology of coopera­
tion” (Mooney, 2004:96). The aim of this paper and framework is to
resume and contribute to the debate on the de/repoliticisation of agri­
cultural cooperatives (Mooney and Majka, 1995, 2004). This section
starts by discussing how the framework draws on, and tries to overcome
the quantophrenic and Western epistemological biases identified. Then,
the three core elements of the framework are presented. The first level of
the framework is the cooperative triangle, which focuses on unpacking the
dimensions of individual cooperatives. The higher level of the frame­
work is the cooperative hourglass, which puts ACs into the perspective of
the wider food system. Finally, the concept of cooperative sustainability
that brings the two levels together is introduced.
5.1. Overcoming biases in the study of agricultural cooperatives
5.1.1. Beyond quantophrenia – overcoming the reductionism of ACs
The literature review showed that a reductionist economic lens has
been dominant in the study of ACs. This approach reflects a methodo­
logical conservatism that has crept upon social science over the last 10
years (Denzin and Giardina, 2008), evidenced in governmental and
funding agencies’ preference for research that is quantitative, experi­
mental, and statistically generalisable (Tracy, 2010). This preference is
the reflection of a wider preocupation with financial survival in capi­
talist economies through the generation of higher revenues and strate­
gies to secure competitiveness (Slaughter and Larry, 1997). The study of
ACs is not the only food and agricultural realm suffering from quanto­
phrenia, the effect is clear across policy and research approaches that
create institutional locks that reproduce reductionist and productionist
paradigms (Vanloqueren and Baret, 2009).
Pitirim Sorokin, the first chairman of Harvard University’s sociology
department, coined the term quantophrenia in the early 1930s. It refers
to a fixation with, and a preference for factors that can be easily
measured, resulting in misapplication of quantitative methods to soci­
ology. The consequent repercussions in public policy are obvious: for
policy problems to make it to the agenda, and for potential policy so­
lutions to even be suggested, they must be picked from a reduced menu
list constrained by its measurability (Paquet, 2009).
More than two decades ago, Mooney and colleagues identified how
the reprivatisation discourse of neoclassical economics fuelled the
depolitisation of US ACs in the 1980s and 1990s (Mooney et al., 1996).
This coincided with the wider adoption of a universal framework for
economic analysis. The choice of this framework also permeated
academia and education on cooperatives. Kalmi has evidenced how this
paradigm shift from institutional to neoclassical analysis resulted on “a
neglect of the potential of cooperatives in addressing social problems”
(Kalmi, 2007:625). By becoming the dominant discourse, neoclassical
economics’ theories become self-fulfilling through institutional design,
social norms and language (Stofferahn, 2010).
The repercussions on ACs affect not only the public and industry
perception of the cooperative model but also the definition of a coop­
erative and what a “successful cooperative” looks like, i.e. shaping
criteria and indicators of success.
highlights here the male dominated socioeconomic, political and cul­
tural structures of the food system. Finally, the authors provide evidence
of anthropocentrism, reflected on the dominant approach of aiming to
control rather than work with nature (P�erez Neira and Soler Montiel
(2013). These biases are intrinsically linked with the quantophrenic
bias, as they define what is important and what should be reproduced in
whose image. This research has discussed how these biases have
permeated ACs in Europe and their relationship with other producers as
well as the version of ACs exported to other countries and cultures.
The new framework introduced in the next section aims to overcome
the above biases and to widen the range of perspectives used to examine
ACs. It proposes a tool that can be used both for the evaluation of in­
dividual ACs and to create a language that those involved in alternative
food systems and cooperatives can use to negotiate and understand
different cooperative endevours.
5.2. An integrated theoretical framework for agricultural cooperatives
5.2.1. The cooperative triangle
This section puts forward a new conceptualisation of cooperatives
conceiving them as undertakings that can be deconstructed into
different layers that become expressions of cooperativism across four
dimensions of the cooperative identity discussed earlier: legal form,
governance model, social movement and informal cooperative behav­
iours that predate all other layers (Fig. 1). The four proposed dimensions
can be seen as sliding scales in which different ACs’ realities can be
mapped.
In the case of ACs, I argue that this multifaceted character is
increasingly being fragmented by the mainstream food system. The least
radical aspects of cooperativism that can be easily absorbed without
requiring a wider transformation of neoliberal industrial practices are
being co-opted by larger players for their own objectives. Below, I briefly
define each of the four dimensions that can be used as a way of analysing
the priorities and signs of identity of different ACs. It is beyond the remit
of this paper to discuss detailed indicators for each dimension of the
framework nor to evaluate any specific cooperatives at this stage,

5.1.2. Western epistemology’s three fundamental biases: ethnocentrism,

androcentrism and anthropocentrism
The data have reflected a series of biases in the practices of ACs that
can be explained by what P� erez Neira and Soler Montiel (2013) have
termed the “Western epistemological crisis”. Epistemology is a branch of
philosophy that studies what is accepted to constitute valid knowledge
and how it can be obtained (Vasilachis de Gialdino, 2009). Perez Neira
and Soler Montiel have identified three epistemological biases that
affect the globalised food system: ethnocentric, androcentric and
anthropocentric biases. The ethnocentric bias refers to perceiving and
constructing understandings of other cultures and peoples as inferior, a
trend that has been discussed earlier in this article in reference to current Fig. 1. Cooperative Triangle: illustrating the multi-dimensional character of
European ACs’ impact in developing countries. Androcentrism agricultural cooperatives.

474
R. Ajates
however, next steps for further research are offered in the conclusions.
a. Informal cooperative behaviours
This dimension refers to informal and unregulated expressions of
cooperation amongst food producers. These informal cooperative be­
haviours pre-date all other elements of cooperatives that developed
later; the benefits of cooperating to survive and grow enough food were
realised by farmers well before formalised cooperatives were created
(Chloupkova et al., 2003). Not strangely, law and institutions often, if
not always, lag behind established social practices, in this case, coop­
erative practices in farming (Chloupkova et al., 2003; Sennett, 2012).
b. Legal:
This dimension refers to whether an AC is legally incorporated or
not, and if so, in which form. The legal form and legal provision for
cooperatives developed very differently across Europe, and still today,
legislation of cooperative societies varies enormously amongst countries
(Bijman et al., 2012). Some countries have dozens of cooperative laws,
such as Spain, while in others e.g. UK and Denmark, a specific cooper­
ative legal form does not exist. New models such as multi-stakeholder
cooperatives are bringing together different types of members (con­
sumers, workers and farmers) under the same cooperative organisation
(Ajates Gonzalez, 2017b).
c. Governance
Closely related to the legal form of a cooperative is its governance
model; this component refers to set of governance practices followed by
any given AC but also includes the effects of the wider food governance
Fig. 2. The cooperative hourglass: are ACs offering outward resistance towards companies or inward pressure towards members?.
475
Journal of Rural Studies 78 (2020) 467–479
context ACs exist in. This dimension also takes into account an AC’s
degree of adherence to the cooperative principles. While in theory, each
member is supposed to have one vote, some cooperatives offer more
voting power to members who trade larger volumes with the AC, or in
some cases, external investors are also granted decision making powers
(Stofferahn, 2010).
d. Social movement
Challenging economic conditions are a fertile ground for coopera­
tion, and cooperatives, both at the consumer and producer level, first
emerged as a response to meet the specific needs of groups of people who
struggled to access food or the land and inputs to produce it (Birchall,
1994). The first formal cooperatives that started in the UK and Ireland
were not perceived by their originators as an end in themselves, but as
means to be self-sufficient in food and generated funds for industrial
cooperation projects with the vision of transforming society (Oakeshott,
1978; Ajates Gonzalez, 2017a).
5.2.2. The cooperative hourglass
The cooperative hourglass is the second core element of the proposed
framework. This higher level of the framework analyses ACs in the wider
context of food systems. The hourglass in Fig. 2 illustrates how ACs can
exercise power either in:
� an outward direction towards a) the agro-inputs industry at one end
and/or b) the processors and retailers past the farm gate at the other
end
� or inwards, towards their own farmer members
This framework proposes that when one or more of the four
R. Ajates
components of cooperatives from the cooperative triangle are missing or
become disjointed, cooperatives start to behave in a more corporate-like
way and invert the direction of their power from outwards, common in
earlier ACs, to inwards, a growing trend in modern ACs.
It is important to mention at this point that the food system is not
linear, but circular, and that there are waste and environmental impacts
in every link of the chain that affect the capacity of nature and biodi­
versity to reproduce themselves and the food system. Therefore, this
model does not advocate a simplistic linear vision of the food system that
assumes infinite resources at one end and a limitless capacity to absorb
waste at the other. This model presents a snapshot of the system to
provide a closer look at the wider power relations in which ACs are
embedded.
The diagram shows how supply ACs sit between farmers and natural
diversity. This illustrates supply cooperatives’ power to introduce
certain varieties of crops and not others to large groups of farmer
members. Numerous cultural, economic, political and environmental
factors shape the limited selection of crops that societies cultivate for
human or livestock consumption. The agri-input industry acts as a
gatekeeper to the abundant natural diversity by commercialising a
limited number of varieties for a limited number of crops (Altieri, 2007).
The system also rewards monoculture and homogenous yields, away
from natural diversity. In the same sense, they introduce pesticides that
reduce other biodiversity and natural pest predators in farms (Soberania
Alimentaria, 2013). The hourglass figure explains this trend by high­
lighting the need for ACs to reverse the direction in which they target
their pressure and resistance. In their origins, ACs exerted pressure
outwards by offering resistance to supply companies selling over-priced
or adulterated inputs to farmers, or offering to pay low prices for their
produce (Birchall, 1994). Nowadays, growing evidence suggests the
target of that pressure has been reversed; external actors (processors,
retailers and agri-input companies) are increasingly using cooperatives
to access many farmers at once, and impose products, varieties, growing
methods and specifications. Power strongholds in the system are illus­
trated in the figure by the large players on the left creating bottlenecks in
the hourglass. No arrows showing the direction of the “pressure” have
been included in the hourglass as its purpose is to also serve as a blank
analytical canvas to map actors and dynamics for specific ACs. When
applied to specific cases, individual hourglasses with different numbers
and size (importance) of players, and power flows will emerge.
ACs’ relationships of power over members, their impact in devel­
oping countries and their increased co-optation by the dominant
industrialised food regime (Harriet, 2009) show theoretical parallelisms
with the conventionalisation thesis in relation to the organic and fair
trade movements (Buck et al 1997; Guthman, 2004; Rosin and Camp­
bell, 2009). In this sense, the signifiers become uncoupled from the
signified. The fragmentation of what it means to be organic, or
fair-traded or cooperatively produced has given way to the co-option of
the most market-friendly dimensions of these (alternative) ways of
production by the dominant food regime, weakening their original as­
pirations for wider transformation (Goodman et al., 2011; Griffiths,
2012).
This institutionalisation of a standards-based and measurable
approach to organic farming, fair trade or agricultural cooperativism, is
encouraged by polices that require groups of farmers to tick certain
boxes to be eligible for certain certifications or subsidies. In this sense,
there is a rupture from original visions of transformation, as these
movements are diluted by substituting their process-based approaches
to standard-based ones of “allowable inputs”, or in the case of ACs,
“allowable principles or practices”. Ongoing debates in academia and
civil society have warned of similar risks of cooptation in the realm of
agroecology (Levidow et al., 2014; Ajates Gonzalez et al., 2018).
5.2.3. Cooperative sustainability
In this section I introduce the notion of “cooperative sustainability”
(CS) to refer to the reduction of the sustainability of the cooperative
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Journal of Rural Studies 78 (2020) 467–479
itself, its essence, especially with regards to the social movement
dimension of ACs, but also with intertwined environmental
connotations.
ACs have been redefined to focus on the one hand on easier to
measure and financial objectives as part of a process of pro­
fessionalisation of farming in general, and of cooperatives in particular;
on the other hand, a more practical and "smart" definition of ACs fits
state-supported agricultural paradigms, as it increases the ease of
assessing eligibility for the allocation of farming subsidies and adhering
to a globalised food market dominated by a few large players. The
hourglass showed in Fig. 2 helps illustrate this point. At one end of the
food system, we have nature, with outstanding biodiversity. As dis­
cussed in the previous section, supply ACs are the first point of contact
between the consolidated agri-inputs industry and farmers. A handful of
agri-inputs corporations controls most of the market and thus, the va­
rieties that are commercialised.
As ACs grow more focussed on monocultures, they become more
dependent on these companies, and contribute to loss of diversity and
“bioterrorist threats” (Mooney, 2004:96). In this level of the hourglass,
power imbalances already appear, as despite the high number of co­
operatives existing in the EU, a very small group accounts for most of the
trade, which is also the case for marketing cooperatives (Bijman et al.,
2012). Large marketing cooperatives fit well in the logistics model of
large processors and supermarkets that find it much easier to deal with
one cooperative salesperson than five thousand individual farmer
members.
The notion of CS brings together both the cooperative triangle and
hourglass. The data showed that factors weakening cooperative sus­
tainability are bifold and interlinked with issues of specific un­
derstandings of “professionalisation of farming” on the one hand, and
lack of cooperative education on the other as discussed in section four.
Based on these data, I define CS as the ability or capacity for an AC to
maintain the four dimensions indicated in the cooperative triangle while
also fostering environmental sustainability.
Former debates around CS have been mainly on the legal dimension
proposed by the framework presented in this paper, primarily around
conversion debates to IOFs (Mooney et al., 1996; Dunn, 1988; Stoffer­
ahn, 2010). The concept of CS contributes to this literature both theo­
retically and methodologically. Theoretically, it expands the debate to
other dimensions of ACs beyond their legal form, governance and
investor profile. Methodologically, CS is a construct that can be evalu­
ated, explored and further developed through the application of the
theoretical framework proposed in this paper for assessing individual
case studies; the application can be done on either specific cooperatives,
or to assess the potential impact of policies relating to ACs and agri­
culture by analysing how a particular policy intervention can impact
cooperative sustainability based on the effects/implications for each of
the cooperative dimensions proposed.
This research puts forward the concept of CS to suggest that unless
ACs succeed in integrating the four elements of the cooperative triangle
(Fig. 1), their model will eventually become something else, no longer
cooperative and no longer transformative. Some of the factors that can
help achieve cooperative sustainability are:
1) reverting pressure outwards towards large players in the food system
instead of inwards towards members.
2) overcoming Western epistemological biases of anthropocentrism,
ethnocentric and androcentrism and,
3) overcoming quantophrenic definitions of success
Some concluding remarks are offered below.
6. Conclusions
This paper started depicting the development of agricultural coop­
eration in Europe, with a focus on the last 50 years. The wide variety of
R. Ajates
data and informants consulted have revealed how cooperation in
farming can come in an sliding scale of a) formality (from informal
“neighbourly” behaviours to legal incorporation that varies greatly
across countries); b) of adherence to the cooperative principles, and
commitment to the wider cooperative social movement and c) business
approaches, from the more cooperative, the more corporate like such as
mergers and oppenenss to external investment.
The review of the literature and the evidence presented in the dis­
cussion section suggest the factors encouraging the corporatisation of
ACs in the EU are multilevel:
- Cooperative level: with a growing lack of continuous education of
members on the history, meaning and value of their cooperative and
the wider cooperative movement.
- National level: domestic cooperative policies and legal frameworks
affect ACs, as well as policies aiming to increase the profitability of
the farming as an economic sector; data suggest a clear support for
consolidation of the sector and larger farms.
- EU level: CAP pushing for PO model to concentrate demand and
facilitate trade in the Common Market and beyond.
- Global level: the introduction of agriculture global trade is also
pushing ACs to both become bigger players to be able to compete in
their national markets and export to foreign markets. ACs’ increasing
outsourced activities in developing countries are not always under­
pinned by cooperative principles. There has also been a process of
policy transfer from the US with the adoption of New Generation
Cooperatives’ hybrid models.
As a result of the above factors, the different dimensions of ACs have
become disjointed. The pressure ACs were originally set up to exert
outwards towards external actors in order to protect members against
the effects of powerful companies operating both before (agricultural
inputs industry) and after the farm gate (processors and retailers) is
increasingly inverted towards the cooperative members themselves,
blunting ACs’ transformative power. The growth of larger and more
corporate ACs reduce farmers’ options at several levels: there are fewer
number of ACs they can join, and once a member, they experience more
top-down control from their own AC in terms of what to grow and how
to grow it. This top-down approach is even more critical for AC members
in developing countries, where the links between neo-colonialism and
globalisation are pushing the introduction of ACs without an underlying
grassroots movement to support them and guide them.
This research has shown how certain elements of ACs can be more
susceptible to co-optation than others; evidence presented showed how
powerful actors in the agro-inputs, processing and retailing industries
can turn the advantage of having many producers grouped in a single AC
to their own benefit by using ACs as an entry to point to introduce
products lines and varieties (from agro-industries) as well as quality
standards and logistic demands (from processors and retailers) to a large
numbers of farmers in one go. ACs gained greater institutional legiti­
macy and subsidies advancing the cooperative model as a business case
claim rather than a socio-political agenda of transformation.
Research in this particular topic of co-optation raises a number of
difficult issues around cooperation and highlights some uncomfortable –
but potentially fruitful if opening spaces for critical reflections– tensions
between cooperative governance and cooperatives’ survival. Farmers
interviewed reported feeling frustrated about the loss of members’
power in cooperatives but at the same time pointed out they could not
continue farming without the backing of their cooperatives. The new
theoretical framework presented offers the explanatory power to
acknowledge these contradictions and differentiate between co­
operatives as organisations and cooperative practices. The cooperative
hourglass model (Fig. 2) can help illustrate these ongoing tensions be­
tween the cooperative economic model and the market economy they
exist in. The critical theory put forward in this paper also allows to
analyse trends in labour relations and dynamics of production and
477
Journal of Rural Studies 78 (2020) 467–479
power in European ACs as well as their impact overseas, a key issue in an
increasingly globalised food system.
The top-down vertical character of the market economy and glo­
balised food system has taken over the horizontality and equality prin­
ciples that informed the original roots of cooperatives. This paper has
put forward the concept of cooperative sustainability to suggest that
unless ACs succeed in integrating the four elements of the cooperative
triangle (legal form, governance model, social movement and informal
cooperative behaviours that predate all the other dimensions), their
model will gradually become something else, no longer cooperative and
no longer transformative. Strategies to achieve sustainability include
reverting pressure outwards towards large players in the food system
instead of inwards towards members, as well as overcoming Western
epistemological biases and quantophrenic definitions of success. For this
reason, when promoting cooperatives as a way to achieve more sus­
tainable and fairer food systems, we need to be careful and more specific
on the type of cooperatives and cooperation we want to reproduce.
The findings have highlighted areas where further research could be
undertaken, especially from a sociological perspective to complement
the abundant economic literature on ACs, such as indicators of success
and ACs’ conceptions of sustainability. It was beyond the remit of this
paper to discuss detailed indicators for each dimension of the framework
proposed. This is an area for further research, both from a methodo­
logical point of view, as well as to collate empirical evidence from the
application of the framework to specific ACs or agricultural policies’
impacts on different cooperative dimensions. Comparative insights
could emerge from the application of the framework to individual
cooperative cases, including emerging multi-stakeholder models and
agricultural workers’ cooperatives, to assess differences across the wide
cooperative diversity that continues to grow in food and farming.
Acknowledgment
This research was funded by the Centre for Food Policy at City,
University of London.
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