The UN General Assembly has proclaimed 2025 as the International Year of Cooperatives. António Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, has assured that they demonstrate the importance of union to forge solutions to global challenges. He also highlighted the fundamental role they play in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
In Soria, Copiso represents very well the importance of this associative productive model. Not in vain, it is the first company in the province in terms of turnover. An entity that was born in 1967 and that, almost six decades later, stands as an example of success not only economically, but also socially.
Copiso was “the reaction to the situation that the rural environment of Soria and its agricultural activity was going through”, recalls Pascual López, general manager of the Soria cooperative. Thousands of families were leaving their villages to go and work in the industrial centers in different Spanish cities in search of a brighter future. 67 local cooperatives and 320 individual farmers and stockbreeders joined together to jointly face the problems and challenges of the Soria countryside, and promoted the ‘first’ Provincial Agricultural Cooperative. It was “the greatest social mobilization that Soria has had since the 20th century”, according to López.
Fifty-seven years have passed since that moment and the general manager considers that Copiso has been “an essential tool to ‘hold’ the province and develop its primary sector”. Now, there are more than 1,300 members (there were more than 1,800 in 1970) and they generate about 800 direct jobs. They account for a third of the province’s agricultural activity and are the main pig-producing cooperative in Spain. And most importantly, they provide security to the farmer so that he only has to dedicate himself and focus on cultivating.
Copiso, like all cooperatives, focuses on people and not on capital, which is considered only “an instrument to carry out the activities of interest to the members, who are the beneficiaries of the economic results,” says Pascual López. What prevails, therefore, is the collective effort with equal rights and duties. This is managed with “democratic decisions through a governing council and the members’ assembly.
Copiso has a relevant identity factor, since it operates mainly in the province of Soria with a “firm commitment to the rural environment and the Soria countryside”. In addition, it differs from other cooperatives because of its circular model, which combines agriculture and livestock farming. “This has reinforced the cooperative spirit because the feed mill belongs to everyone and the commercial pig activity also brings benefits to the farmers”, says the head of Copiso.