Out at the edge of the Western United States, the San Francisco Bay Area is home to dozens of unique, cooperatively-owned businesses. California has long engendered hopes and dreams of epic proportion and lured prospectors seeking wonder and wealth. In the 1840s the world heard a rumor that gold lay in California’s northern hills. Cooperatives […]

More than two hundred and twenty seven thousand individuals, in a population of approximately five hundred thousand inhabitants in Trentino, are members of cooperatives. This means that two families in every three are involved in the cooperative movement. Not only that! If the number of existing cooperatives, a few more than six hundred, is compared […]

Emilia-Romagna is a region in Northern Italy, situated just below the foothills of the Italian Alps. It is one of the richest and most developed regions in Europe, with one of the highest GDP’s of all Italian regions. The outside world knows the region as the home of high end car makers such as Ferrari, […]

Did you know that over a third of all the maple syrup consumed in the world is marketed by cooperatives in Quebec? The Canadian province is a hotspot for cooperatives, with a remarkably developed cooperative sector, both in terms of numbers and diversity. Cooperatives play leading roles in industries like financial services, insurance, agriculture, food, […]

In 1955, the Andalucían province of Almería, in southeastern Spain, was a drought-ridden area with little infrastructure and a GDP per capita of less than half the national average. Most residents who had not already fled in search of better opportunities were merely subsisting. Today, it is the top Spanish fruit and vegetable growing area […]