Abstract
Since 2008 Portugal began to be influenced by a financial crisis, public budget troubles and an economic crisis. In line with the new economic paradigm within the EU, is publicly acknowledged that the overcoming of this crisis should be based on the production of transactional goods, where the agricultural sector deserves a special attention. The objective of this paper is to analyze the economic role of the Portuguese agricultural marketing cooperatives, including an overview of the Portuguese agricultural sector, the typology of Portuguese cooperatives and position in the agro food chain, the institutional environment, internal governance and performance of the agricultural cooperatives.
Highlights
Since 2008 Portugal began to be influenced by a financial crisis, in line the public budget troubles and a consequential economic crisis
The development of Portuguese agricultural cooperatives is strongly related to the evolution of the political system during the last century, in three distinct periods: the “first republic” period, between 1910 and 1926, characterized by strong social convulsions and political instability, is responsible for the emergence of consumer cooperatives; the “dictatorship regime” period, between 1926 and 1974, is characterized by the promotion of agricultural cooperatives in a topdown process and public control; and since 1974 the “democratic regime” period created the conditions to the free foundation of cooperatives, but without high public support
Assuming that agricultural markets are becoming increasingly global and competitive, and that farmers are rational economic agents that try to maximize their own wealth, the loss of market share by cooperatives is an indicator that the structural conditions of Portuguese agriculture and the institutional environment, have not been enough attractive to adopt the cooperative model over the other forms of vertical coordination
Summary
Since 2008 Portugal began to be influenced by a financial crisis, in line the public budget troubles and a consequential economic crisis. The economic role of cooperatives and its position in the food chain needs to be understood in a context where today’s agro-food markets are characterized by: thinner margins, greater price and income volatility due to reduced government involvement and international competition; a trend to fewer, larger and more specialized farms, fewer agribusiness firms; innovative products with a shorter life cycle; food consumption increasingly shaped by demands for variety, convenience, food safety and environment friendly; enormous concentration in the final market of consumers; the increasing importance of the role played by information and commercialization technologies (e.g., e-commerce) Despite these changes in market structure and dynamics, with dominance of the demand over the supply, agricultural raw. In addition to this introduction (section 1) and the conclusion (section 5), the paper includes an overview of the Portuguese agricultural sector (section 2), the typology of Portuguese cooperatives and position in the agro food chain (section 3), the institutional environment, internal governance and performance of the agricultural cooperatives (section 4)
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