Path to Cooperative Survival: Structure, Strategy and Regeneration of Fruit and Vegetables Cooperative in almeria and Valencia, Spain

Two important Spanish fruit and vegetable (F&V) producing areas of Almeria and Valencia in which agricultural cooperatives and smallholder and family farmers play a vital role are compared. Their F&V cooperatives have distinct development paths and have adopted different structures and strategies, attributable to historical, cultural and political circumstance, infrastructure, regulation and policy measures and/or international exposure. In considering the factors which contribute to agricultural cooperative success or failure, persistent atomization is often cited as inhibiting the ability of cooperatives to thrive. While not discounting that economies of scale may be important, we argue for analysing agricultural cooperative activity using a neo-endogenous approach (a mix of exogenous and endogenous factors wherein local level characteristics and actors interact with external or global forces), combined with insights from path dependency theory and a dynamic lifecycle approach. Agricultural cooperatives are presented as dynamic entities, capable of renewal, redeployment, regeneration and recombination.