TORONTO – The theme of Tuesday’s World Food Day 2012 is agricultural cooperatives, hailed as the “key to feeding the world.”
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) issues paper defines a cooperative or “co-op” as a social enterprise that aims to satisfy its members’ needs and pursue profit and sustainability.
“In other words, a cooperative is an association of women and men who come together to form a jointly owned, democratically controlled enterprise where generating a profit is only part of the story,” reads the paper. “Cooperatives put people before profit. They also help their members achieve their shared social, cultural and economic aspirations.”
The report says producer organizations and co-ops contribute to food security by “helping small farmers, fisher folk, livestock keepers, forest holders and other producers to access the information, tools and services they need.” The result of this is an increase in food production, and a way for them to improve their own livelihoods by marketing their goods and creating jobs.
Globalnews.ca takes a look at co-ops by the numbers, with data from the FAO’s World Food Day 2012 issues report.
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925 million – The estimated number of people in the world who are hungry
70 – The percentage of hungry people who live in rural areas where agriculture is the economic mainstay
166 – The percentage by which the price of rice climbed in 2007-2008
74 – The percentage by which the price of corn climbed in 2007-2008
100 million – Number of jobs cooperatives provide around the world; which is 20 per cent more than multinational enterprises
1 billion – Number of people who are members of cooperatives worldwide
USD $1.1 trillion – The aggregate turnover that the top 300 co-ops were responsible for in 2008, which is the same size as Canada’s economy and close to the size of Spain’s economy.
70 – The percentage of the coffee market share that co-ops have in Kenya
80 – The percentage of dairy production that dairy co-ops control in the U.S.
500,000 – The number of coffee growers the National Federation of Coffee Growers provides production and marketing services to in Colombia
22 – The percentage of the milk produced by the Indian Dairy Cooperatives in India in 2005
12.3 million – The number of members of the Indian Dairy Cooperatives; 60 per cent of whom are landless or have very small plots of land, and 25 per cent of whom are women
40 –The percentage of Brazil’s agricultural GDP that co-ops are responsible for
44 –The percentage of active cooperatives working in the agricultural sector in Vietnam
4 million – The number of farmers earning income from membership in agricultural co-ops in Egypt
900,000 – The number of farmers earning income from membership in agricultural co-ops in Ethiopia
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