Agricultural Co-operatives in Australia and Italy

In the course of the twentieth century and across the globe, co-operatives have grown in numbers, their market share has increased and their overall impact on members’ and communities’ well-being is now being properly acknowledged. This is particularly true for agricultural co-operatives. This is immensely important in the move towards a more solidarity oriented economy and beyond market fundamentalism (Stiglitz 2009). In the European Union (EU) alone, where the agricultural sector accounts for about 14.7 per cent of the total manufacturing output, co-operatives are responsible for 38.5 per cent of it. Around 40.000 EU’s co-operative enterprises along with their 600.000 employees and around 9 million members manage to collect, add value to and place on the market around 60 per cent of the total agricultural produce in the EU. Added to this, co-operative resilience to various types of crises owing to their tendency to avoid risky and speculative ventures and investments is now well researched and documented