Creation and development of agricultural cooperatives – Evaluation of the model tested in the programme “Rural Development through Entrepreneurship and Association”
CRPE Policy Memo no. 74, Authors: Oana Ganea, Alexandra Toderiţă, QCA Expert: Wolfgang Stuppert
In December 2017, 1083 agricultural cooperatives were set up in Romania, of which only half of them had submitted a balance sheet one year ago according to the data gathered by CRPE. From our analyzes, there are few economically sustainable agricultural cooperatives in Romania compared to their number “on paper”. Most often, they have been experiencing many difficulties since they were set up, and if they go through this stage, they fail to become economically relevant.
Starting with 2012, the Romanian-American Foundation (RAF) has come to support the formation of three agricultural cooperatives in Romania. Hence, the “Rural Development through Entrepreneurship and Association” programme piloted a support model provided to farmers for about three years by organizations with expertise in community facilitation and rural economic development.
In this research, we wanted to find out which of the RAF “ingredients” for Romanian cooperatives are the most important and lead to the development of a successful cooperative, what other types of cooperatives can be found outside of this model and how they work so that we have a clearer understanding of what should be the next steps towards a public policy for this sector.
Full report, in Romanian, is available here.