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The European Commission is publishing a comprehensive study on "Support for Farmers' Cooperatives". The objective is to provide background knowledge to help farmers organising themselves in cooperatives, so that they can rely on a solid market income.
The main conclusions are as follows: farmers’ cooperatives play an important role in helping farmers to capture a larger share of value added in the food supply chain. Agrifood supply chains are generally characterised by bargaining imbalances between farmers and their upstream and downstream partners, so cooperatives are key in strengthening their bargaining power. However, cooperatives' power vis-à-vis retailers tends to remain limited. Efforts to strengthen it further will most likely lead to more mergers between cooperatives. These mergers also allow seeking economies of scale in Research and Development and branding. If they are to support farmers in this trend, legal definitions of producer organisations and support measures should not discriminate against large cooperatives. The growth process is often accompanied by changes in the member-cooperative relationship, boards of cooperatives should therefore be aware of the risk that growth entails for member control.
There are large differences between Member States. Cooperatives have a high market share in countries like Denmark and Finland, but much lower in countries like Estonia or Spain. The bar chart shows the data for each of the Member States. For UK, Romania, Bulgaria, Luxembourg and Cyprus data are sketchy or not available. The average market share of all agricultural cooperatives in the EU is 40%.
The full text of the study can be found at: http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/external-studies/support-farmers-coop_en.htm
Monday March 4, 2013/ European Commission/ European Union.
http://europa.eu/rapid
