The Ministry recognizes four new Priority Associative entities

The Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and Environment, Isabel García Tejerina, has presided today, at the headquarters of the Ministry, the act of awarding recognition to four new Priority Association Entities. It is the Consortium for the Promotion of the Sheep, S.C .; the Sociedad Cooperativa Andaluza Ganadera del Valle de los Pedroches (COVAP); the Sociedad Cooperativa Limitada Bajo Duero (COBADU); and the Unió Corporació Alimentária S.C.C.L.

With them are already 10 entities recognized as Priority Associative Entities that, as a whole, bring together about 130,000 members, with more than 310 base entities in 15 autonomous regions and a turnover, for the products subject to recognition, which exceed the 2,800 million euros.

As pointed out by García Tejerina, these data suppose, in the whole of the Spanish cooperative movement, almost 11% of the base members, close to 10% of the cooperatives, and 10.83% of the total turnover. For the minister, these data show that “we are making steady progress towards achieving the objective of integration and modernization of our agri-food cooperatives”.

Four new entities

In his speech, García Tejerina congratulated these entities and thanked their efforts to meet the conditions required by the law of associative integration.

Consortium of Promotion of the Ovine S.C., recognized for ovine of milk and meat, is a cooperative of the first degree that, after a great integrating effort, has turned into the biggest cooperative of the sector at European level. A leading company in the sector with partners in Castilla y León, Navarra and Castilla-La Mancha.

Sociedad Cooperativa Andaluza Ganadera del Valle de los Pedroches (COVAP), recognized for animal feed, milk and dairy products, Iberian pork and beef cattle, is a livestock cooperative society, with more than 50 years of history, engine of economic and social development , with partners distributed in Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha and Extremadura.

Sociedad Cooperativa Limitada Bajo Duero (COBADU), recognized for animal feed and beef cattle, is a first-grade cooperative with a long history, with more than 35 years of life. From the commitment and closeness with its partners in Castilla y León, Extremadura, Castilla-La Mancha, Basque Country, Andalusia, Principality of Asturias, Canary Islands and Galicia, has developed a solvent cooperative, with capacity to compete with guarantees in the current market.

It united Corporació Alimentària S.C.C.L., recognized for nuts, is a cooperative of second degree, founded in Reus in 1942, with extensive experience and commitment to the territory, the environment and collaboration with associated cooperatives. It is also an example of continued innovation, efficiency and business seriousness, with partners in Catalonia, the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands, the Region of Murcia, Aragon and Castilla-La Mancha.

State Plan for Cooperative Integration

In this context, the minister has indicated that the Government has launched a set of structural reforms to provide an adequate dimension to the associative companies with the objective that they can face the challenges of the global market. Among these initiatives is the promotion of the integration of supply in the agri-food sector, through the Law of Associative Integration.

This law, in addition to offering the Cooperatives the legal entity Priority Associative Entity of supra-autonomous scope, articulates a State Plan for Cooperative Integration that includes a set of associative integration measures included in the National Rural Development Program 2014-2020, measures that address training, investments, information and demonstration, and cooperation in energy efficiency and biomass use.

According to the minister, the FEADER allocation for these measures is more than 100 million euros for the period 2014-2020, which, together with national funding, supposes a support that exceeds 200 million euros.

In this area, the Ministry has annually convened such grants since 2016. Thus, in the first two calls, 58 projects were supported, which benefited from more than 29 million euros. And in the 2018 call for applications have been submitted for 62 new projects. In total, the Ministry will commit more than 65 million euros in these three calls.

Finally, García Tejerina has reiterated the commitment of his Department to promote, along with other administrations, to continue promoting this new cooperative model, capable of generating wealth and employment in rural areas, enhancing endogenous resources, preserving the landscape and the cultural heritage.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE:

➡️Ministry and horticultural organizations study the elaboration of a Strategic Plan for the fruit of bone

➡️The Ministry signs four collaboration agreements to modernize 9,000 hectares of irrigated land in Alto Aragón and Málaga