PATHS TO COOPERATIVE SURVIVAL: STRUCTURE, STRATEGY AND REGENERATION OF FRUIT AND VEGETABLES COOPERATIVES IN ALMERÍA 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 f…