In 2025, 2,100 French agricultural cooperatives are in turmoil. Because of this, between Donald Trump’s tariff struggle, the warfare in Ukraine and the Mercosur settlement, they’re banding in combination in cooperative teams to take at the international agri-food giants. However, in particular, how can those distinctive corporations take care of their ideas of cooperation in such gigantic buildings?
The World Agricultural Honest in Paris is a chance to invite your self, have you learnt which corporations constitute 3 out of 4 farmers, one out of 3 meals manufacturers and 70% of French agricultural manufacturing? Solution: agricultural cooperatives.
In fresh months, massive merger tasks have resulted in the introduction of cooperative teams with a turnover of a number of billion euros. For instance, the quantity discussed for the merger of the Normandy cooperative Agrial with its counterpart Terren from the Loire nation is estimated at 12 billion euros. This team would deliver in combination a portfolio of cult manufacturers, equivalent to Florette, Soubli, Tipiak and Pere Dodu.
Those convergence processes additionally fear smaller cooperatives such because the Vinai and Manci wine cooperatives in Épernay (Marne).
At the back of those sums that can appear stratospheric, those teams retain a cooperative standing, outlined as “an autonomous association of people voluntarily brought together to satisfy their common economic, social and cultural aspirations and needs through a company owned collectively and governed democratically.”
So, are we able to believe those concentrations to stay appropriate with the cooperative fashion? Does the industrial measurement rhyme with the spouse’s pastime in cooperation?
3. French commercial sector
In France, cooperatives are regulated by means of a 1947 legislation, damaged down into agricultural cooperatives within the Rural Code on Sea Fishing. Since then, there were a number of legislative adjustments. Alternatively, Regulations no. 91-005 of January 3, 1991 and no. 92-643 of July 13, 1992 added measures that result in their constant building within the type of a cooperative team and impact their democratic control.
Greater than 2,100 agricultural cooperatives, of which 93% are VSE-SMEs 10,400 cooperatives the usage of agricultural apparatus Greater than 200,000 jobs together with subsidiaries 3. French commercial sector €34 billion of capital held by means of farmers 75% of member farms
Those cooperative teams have turn into main financial gamers. They make up greater than 90% of the turnover of the rural cooperation. Main French cooperative team InVivo, a syndicate of 187 father or mother cooperatives, manages greater than 200 subsidiaries for a consolidated turnover of €11.7 billion. On the identical time, 4 teams are within the most sensible 10 agri-food corporations in France: the Agrial team in 4th place, Sodiaal in seventh, Terrena in ninth and Cooperl Arc Atlantikue in tenth position.
Vital measurement
At the back of those spectacular quantities, the monetary state of affairs of positive cooperatives, together with grain cooperatives, worsened. The ratio of web monetary debt to fairness higher from 74.88% in 2018-2019 to 93.88% in 2023-2024. At the profitability aspect, the margin remained slightly strong, shifting from 3.28% in 2018-2019 to a few.31% in 2023-2024.
Subsequently, fresh mergers of cooperatives, equivalent to Agrial and Terrena, are connected to the seek for advanced financial profitability, in more and more aggressive markets and in an risky geopolitical context. They fear all sectors of job, cereals, milk or wine, and so forth.
Attaining crucial measurement—the minimal marketplace measurement important for a trade to be viable—is very important on account of the restricted monetary capability of conventional agricultural cooperatives. The objective: to construction the economic be offering, consolidate sectors and cope with markets which can be changing into international.
On this manner, cooperatives try to percentage dangers, to mix very important funding prices and innovation with the intention to make transitions – agro-ecological, power, virtual – in all sectors and territories.
Acquisition of businesses
In recent times, cooperative teams have higher the introduction and acquisition of business legislation corporations, incorporating them into consortia of complicated actions. At the back of this elementary development is the query of looking for new financing, whilst ensuring cooperative companions, or farmer participants, retain their decision-making energy.
Those cooperative teams are structured between a father or mother corporate with cooperative standing (cooperative or cooperative affiliation) and subsidiaries basically beneath industrial legislation. Those French agricultural cooperatives are the world over considered conventional cooperatives given the primary ideas established by means of the righteous pioneers of Rochedale (England, nineteenth century). Particularly, the capital possession of the top of the cooperative stays within the unique arms of the farmer-members and their representatives, who’re ruled by means of the democratic executive consistent with the primary of “one person = one vote”.
Agricultural cooperative fashion. Agrial, CC BI
If truth be told, the outlet of cooperative capital to non-cooperative companions is proscribed, if now not not possible. Keep an eye on of the corporate stays the principle proper of the subcontractors, the house owners of the corporate via percentage possession. The latter are the primary financiers of the cooperative’s stocks.
By means of developing partnerships with traders on the stage of business branches, and now not throughout the head of the gang beneath cooperative standing, the trouble of attracting exterior capital is thus have shyed away from.
There aren’t any buddies outdoor of France
Agricultural cooperatives are territorially anchored corporations. They’ve a singular prison feature on the planet: a territorial district, a geographical perimeter connected to their financial job and showed by means of the Top Council for Agricultural Cooperation (HCCA). The latter defines the club zone through which it’s conceivable for manufacturers dwelling there to enroll in the cooperative. How? By means of taking social stocks, repayment for his or her engagement throughout the contribution of price range or using cooperative products and services.
Out of doors of this “territorial constituency” or non-membership, the co-operative is exempt from carrying out trade restricted to twenty% of its turnover with “unaffiliated third parties”, for the provision of fabrics or the supply of products and services. Clearly, he’s loose to promote his collaborators’ merchandise with out restrictions on visitors or geographical house. This rest, licensed by means of the Ministry of Agriculture, objectives to catch up on conceivable losses associated with a nasty harvest, which is prone to problem the industrial stability of the cooperative. This rule clearly does now not fear branches of business legislation.
Associate standing can’t be bought for manufacturers dwelling outdoor France, opposite to the apply in different international locations. For instance, the 12,000 farmers of the dairy cooperative Arla Meals are living in seven international locations: the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden and Germany.
The case of the improvement of multifunctional cooperatives, equivalent to Agrial or Terrena, stays a feature of French agricultural cooperatives, which can’t be relocated and are key gamers in meals sovereignty. In any case, the objective is to enforce governance that lets them take care of closeness with their companions and ensure their position in decision-making.
