The Assembly of Agro-Food Cooperatives of Spain wanted the campaign “Buenas Hasta el Hueso” (Good to the Stone), which aims to encourage people to enjoy the seasonal stone fruit of Spanish cooperatives, to have a prominent place in the event.
Cooperative stone fruit support campaign
Agri-food Cooperatives of Spain today held its annual General Assembly at the School of Agricultural Engineers of the Polytechnic University of Madrid, ETSIAAB, which brought together more than a hundred delegates from cooperatives and representatives of the agri-food sector.
The Assembly of Agro-Food Cooperatives of Spain wanted the campaign “Buenas Hasta el Hueso” (Good to the Stone), which aims to encourage people to enjoy the seasonal stone fruit of Spanish cooperatives, to have a prominent place in the event.
Peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums, flat peaches and cherries, all stone fruit, have been part of a still life and have helped to highlight, among those attending the Assembly, the role of farmers and their cooperatives to offer consumers healthy and safe food, close, and produced in a sustainable way, supporting the economy of rural areas and the future of thousands of family farms living in our villages.
Work of the cooperative movement
The president of Cooperativas Agro-alimentarias de España, Ángel Villafranca, stressed at the closing ceremony that “given the current drought situation, it is necessary to research, innovate, invest and guarantee the use of water in agriculture in order to continue producing food“. He also reiterated that “if we want to preserve the productive structures, such as cooperatives, processors and marketers of the food that our farmers and ranchers produce, it is necessary to extend the measures recently presented by the Government“.
During his speech, Ángel Villafranca stressed that 123,000 people work in cooperatives, 46% of them women, which shows the important role played by cooperatives as stable employment providers in rural areas, as stated by the Observatory of Spanish Agri-food Cooperatives, based on data from 2021.
Ángel Villafranca stressed the importance of cooperatives and their contribution to the Spanish agri-food sector, not only for maintaining an important economic activity and stable employment, but also for remaining faithful to their commitment to the rural areas where they are based. The agri-food cooperative movement in our country groups together more than one million member families, in 3,669 cooperatives, which had a turnover of 38,428 million euros in 2021 38,428 million in 2021, +12.3% over the previous year.
The event was also attended by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, who stressed that he is aware of what the decrease in activity for cooperatives due to the drought means and that fiscal, labor and economic liquidity measures are being contemplated for this purpose.
Before the Awards Ceremony and the closing of the Assembly, the attendees had the opportunity to listen to the talk “Spain in the world 2023: perspectives and challenges”, given by Jorge Tamames. The researcher of the Elcano Royal Institute referred to the continuity of the war in Ukraine and the Spanish presidency of the EU Council during the second half of the year.
Cooperativas Agro-alimentarias de España Awards 2023
During the Assembly, the Cooperativas Agro-alimentarias de España Awards were presented. In this eighth edition, the winning cooperatives were Grupo AN S. Coop, Condes de Albarei, Bodega Cuatro Rayas and Viña Costeira.
