Cooperatives or how to make our traditions into innovations

In the light of the climate crisis, short supply chains are increasingly favored. Over the past few decades, new structures have emerged in our villages, bringing joy to residents and attracting curious tourists. They present themselves as the perfect solution for consumers seeking to adopt more mindful consumption that is less environmentally costly and of higher quality.

For farmers and artisans, cooperatives are the structure of choice for operating in short supply chains. This allows them better compensation as they’re no longer dependent on large distribution margins while enabling better visibility for their products. Not to mention the satisfaction of knowing who buys their products and that the buyer appreciates them at their true value (or at least more than when they mindlessly purchase mass-produced Norwegian salmon from an unknown source). Cooperatives are also places of transmission, particularly for artisans who can showcase their products and manufacturing methods from A to Z. It’s a tourism approach that contrasts with mass tourism through its human aspect, with a reasonable number of visitors, respecting the environment and local cultures.

Among these cooperatives, many are initiatives of women-only groups. In rural areas, women are primarily responsible for preserving heritage as they transmit it through education and/or utilize it for household duties. By coming together this way, they not only share their knowledge on a larger scale but also free themselves from numerous inequalities and sexist traditions in the agricultural and rural craft sector: financial dependence, social isolation, precarity, invisibility… Above all, by creating their own spaces for exchange and decision-making, they clearly oppose their rejection from society’s decision-making bodies. The economic production and social power generated puts them in a favorable position to influence community decisions. These women thus create fundamentally sustainable development as it addresses many of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

By reinventing tourism, they also create new spaces for socialization that showcase and enhance their villages. These cooperative spaces also help slow rural exodus and desertification of these areas by creating local jobs. And if all this weren’t enough, cooperatives have demonstrated their resilience in the face of economic and social crises. During periods of conflict or reconstruction, they are often among the first structures to form, offering essential support to communities. Women, in particular, find in cooperatives a means to rebuild the social fabric and respond to collective needs, thus contributing to peace-building and community reconstruction.

In the Mediterranean, these structures are particularly prevalent. Historically, this is where they have managed to develop. They emerged in the 19th century and multiplied mainly in countries like Greece, Turkey, and Morocco in the 1980s. In Greece, the country’s main economy relies primarily on the tourism and agricultural sectors. National policies are therefore designed to encourage these key sectors. Combining these two sectors through rural tourism or agritourism is thus a very profitable and supported synergy. Successive crises have created upheavals in the structure of the Greek economy and household. The role of women farmers, in particular, has been re-examined. The mechanization of agriculture led to its “masculinization” and the marginalization of women, who were seen as not competent enough to be in charge of these innovations. This upheaval encouraged female entrepreneurship and the creation of new structures such as cooperatives (reject me from your inventions and I’ll be the one who innovates… quite the comeback!).

This blend of tradition and new structure mingles with a new social and economic organization: women associate with each other to create a new model based on collectivity. Various policies promoting rural women’s emancipation, sustainable tourism, and local heritage preservation have encouraged these initiatives, and women have specialized in various sectors (food products, crafts, catering, accommodation).

In 2013, in Greece, the Ministry of Rural Development and Food estimated that these cooperatives were mainly formed by farmers’ wives, a status that marks a profound lack of recognition. The majority of these women (89.6%) were over 40 years old at the time of this survey. This age illustrates that it was professional experience that enabled the establishment of such structures; cooperatives requiring different skills than those acquired in the household or in agricultural/artisanal employment. The women-only aspect also allows women to adapt the cooperatives’ operations to their schedules, which are overloaded with various household duties and agricultural/artisanal functions.

The cooperative income is initially seen as supplementary monthly income but becomes, in most cases, the majority salary within the household. Women thus gain recognition. This innovation, based on the enhancement of products they already create, finally allows them to obtain recognition for their work, whether economic or social and cultural.

These structures, therefore, have played and continue to play a crucial role in integrating women into local decision-making bodies. These structures are powerful levers for change with real economic, social, cultural, and environmental development impact on local communities. If in the 1980s, organizing collectively was the only way to make their essential household work and agricultural/artisanal functions visible to society, it remains today a means to enhance all their responsibilities and become autonomous. The very need for cooperatives thus shows that there is still much progress to be made in terms of policies and societal norms. New dynamics remain to be created with new sustainable development policies and a reconsideration of culture and rural life. It would be interesting to encourage this new exodus from cities to rural areas of qualified young women and men who get involved and give new life to collective structures.

At Héméra Initiatives, we are already convinced of the importance and various impacts these structures have on our societies, which is why the women involved in them will be at the heart of our publications and advocacy.