Agricultural cooperatives: international experience of functioning in new conditions

Abstract

Modern challenges and threats of a biological, political, climatic and other nature create many diffi culties and risks in the functioning of all economic units, including agricultural cooperatives. Given the uniqueness of both the organizations themselves and the rural space in which they operate, the experience of their adaptation to such extraordinary situations as the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and climate shocks that have brought significant nuances to rural life and agricultural production is of scientific interest. In the course of the research, the main results of which are presented in this article, various review and analytical methods were used, such as formal-logical, comparative, historical-culturological, expert assessments, which made it possible to generalize the practices of agricultural cooperatives functioning in conditions of environmental fl uctuations, (2) to off er the scientific community for discussion some conclusions regarding, fi rstly, the diffi culties faced by cooperatives in connection with the pandemic crisis and its consequences, climate disasters and anomalies, global political tensions, and secondly, the opportunities that have appeared in the countryside for large specialized cooperatives, as well as for small multifunctional cooperative organizations, newly formed to fi ll the emerging niches in the rural economy. Conclusions related to the peculiarities of business behavior of directly agricultural cooperatives in the new environmental conditions were obtained on the basis of a rigorous study of analytical materials and annual reports of the international dairy cooperative Arla Foods, which attracts a variety of innovative measures and tools to overcome emerging problems, which include organizational innovations, managerial innovations, adaptation of the production structure to the changed architecture of demand for dairy products.