Abstract

Agri-food cooperatives have distinguished themselves for generating positive externalities in the territories in which they operate. They have also stood out for providing small and medium farmers the opportunity to compete in the market and achieve productive advantages. As such, different countries have created special legislative frameworks that favor such enterprises. Nevertheless, agri-food cooperatives are subject to their own cooperative principles and the pressures of the markets in which they compete. Given this, what it the real influence that state legislation has over agri-food cooperatives? To answer this question, this paper studies the singularities of the legislation governing these organizations. It studies the cases of COLUN in Chile and COVAP in Spain, two cooperatives with great economic importance in the dairy industry. © 2024 Ministerio de Trabajo y Economia Social. All rights reserved.