Agricultural Cooperative in the Face of the Challenges of Globalization, Sustainability and Digitalization

Dear Colleagues,

The enormous contribution of agricultural cooperative societies to the rural world has not gone unnoticed. This is corroborated by many international entities such as the International Cooperative Alliance, COPA-COGECA, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), the United Nations Inter-Agency Working Group on Social and Solidarity Economy and CIRIEC International.

The International Cooperative Alliance estimates that 12% of the world's population is linked to one of the 3 million cooperatives that exist worldwide, most of them linked to rural areas. Therefore, cooperative societies are not a marginal phenomenon.

In relation to the role played by agricultural cooperatives in the world, it should be said that the agricultural cooperative is an enterprise unconditionally and stably linked to the rural environment, to the farmer and the stockbreeder. For this reason, it plays a leading role in the local economy and in the fixation of the population to the territory, thus contributing to the balance and management of the territory, which makes them true agents of rural development. On the other hand, cooperative societies have been the guarantors of the structuring of agriculture in rural areas in many countries. These organizations constitute the main structured, organized, professionalized and stable network established throughout the territory, in contact with the rural environment, with the capacity to communicate with and influence farmers and stockbreeders. They directly or indirectly provide much of the employment in the rural world and cooperative societies by nature develop their activity under cooperative principles and values that make them exponents of socially responsible enterprises and, therefore, are the key to sustainable development, as promulgated by the United Nations through the SDGs.

The aim of this Special Issue is to highlight the importance of agricultural cooperatives in the face of the challenges of globalization, sustainability and digitalization in rural areas.

Thus, this Special Issue presents different approaches to the object of analysis:

• sustainability of the planet and agricultural cooperativism;
• new models of agricultural cooperativism;
• value chain and agricultural cooperatives;
• food safety and traceability;
• role of cooperatives in the ecological transition;
• circular economy and agricultural cooperativism;
• rural development through cooperatives;
• sustainable tourism and cooperativism;
• sustainable entrepreneurship, social innovation and cooperativism;
• bioeconomy, green economy and cooperativism;
• protection of people, human rights, social exclusion and cooperativism in rural areas;
• decent work, economic growth and cooperativism;
• responsible production and consumption and cooperativism;
• prosperity, economic development, diversification and agricultural cooperativism;
• women, equality and agricultural cooperativism;
• Digital revolution, digitalization and collaborative economy through and agricultural cooperativism;
• governance and agricultural cooperativism;
• partnerships, public policies and agricultural cooperativism;
• analysis of the contribution of agricultural cooperativism to the SDGs;
• marketing and internationalisation.

These topics are the main ones, but they do not exclude others from being contributed.

Dr. Adoración Mozas Moral
Dr. Domingo Fernandez Ucles
Guest Editors

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