Tarragona, headquarters of the III Business Meeting of Cooperative Graziers

Cooperative Agro-alimentary of Spain organised the days 25 and 26 October in Constantí (Tarragona), the III Business Meeting of Cooperative Graziers, in which they participated numerous representatives of cooperatives of the sector grazier and of piensos of all the Spanish territory. The meeting, that has the collaboration of the IRTA and the Federació of Cooperatives Agràries of Catalonia, FCAC, and the sponsorship of the Ministry of Agriculture, Feeding and Environingingment (MAGRAMA), had  like aim establish a meeting point where the cooperative could share interests and debate on the subjects that affect them.

To give continuity to the meeting kept in the year 2010 in Málaga, restarted the need to explore and concretise the different possibilities of alliances between affine cooperatives. Definitely, in these difficult moments, with an important increase of the prices of the inputs and a stage that prevents the distribution of the increase of the costs of production in all the chain of value, the collaboration and the intercooperación are the tools that will allow us keep the competitiveness in the market and improve the perspectives of future. By this reason, the conductive axis of the days was the research of lines of collaboration and the creation of alliances.

The session was directed by Adriaan Pieter Wals, consultor specialised in the design and the reorganisation of companies of the agricultural sector. In his curriculum appears the have been director of the division agropecuaria of Agrifirm, an active Dutch cooperative in almost all the country, resulted of the fusions go in more than 100 local cooperatives in the transcurso of the years. His interventions characterise by a big clarity of ideas and a good dose of common sense in the decisions taken.

Photo: Pieter go der Wulp.