From farm cooperation to territory building: a French case study

Abstract

Agricultural cooperation in France seems to be standing at a crossroads between to change the classical cooperative pattern for surviving in a more competitive global market, or maintain the same pattern surrendering to lower performance pathways. What is changing matters as the current rural development policy widely understands and supports cooperation to achieve multiple interlinked purposes. How the classical agricultural cooperation pattern is changing and how it can meet the new challenges are the questions this paper deals with by analysing a French case study. It has developed an original pathway in which social responsibility and the multiannual commitment for community empowerment play a main role, also providing good economic performance. The case shows a new way as it has adapted the classical cooperative pattern to meet many aims currently pursued by the rural development policy. That happened, however, without changing neither the cooperative method, neither the fundamental cooperative values.