Ignacio de los Ríos

Sources of resilience in agricultural cooperatives: lessons learnt from 25 years of experience in Murcia (Spain)

Resilience is understood as the capacity of rural systems to transform and adapt, and this is key to achieving sustainable rural development. The aim of the research is to study resilience from a cooperative framework based on four concepts: persistence, adaptability, transformation capacity, and learning, and to collect successful strategies that encourage resilience. The research is part of a project called Rethink funded by the European Commission and state agencies of 14 European countries, included in the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) and the ERA-NET RURAGRI. The methodology is structured based on a common analytical framework that holds the four concepts of resilience applied to each of the key stakeholders (cooperative, public sector, private sector and civil society). The case study analyzed is a cooperative that has more than 25 years’ experience in agriculture during which it has demonstrated its capacity for renewal and recovery through its working model. The analysis covers the entire process of the cooperative, from previous experience of farmers, the creation of the company in 2007 to its current projects, focusing not only on market strategies, but also on its strategic vision and research investment, and on values such as trust and respect, on which the cooperative is based. Keywords: adaptability, agricultural Cooperatives, persistence, resilience, social learning, transformability. Article DOI: http://doi.org/10.15544/RD.2015.086