The environmental benefits of grassroots cooperatives in agriculture

Abstract

This paper analyses the environmental benefits of grassroots cooperation in agriculture. Specifically, it focuses on the French context, which is characterised by a heavy reliance on pesticides and by strong inter-farmer interactions structured within farm machinery sharing cooperatives (CUMAs). We theorise that these social interactions are strategically complementary in the sense that the agroecological practices of farmers involved in the CUMA network, in a given spatial unit, are influenced by the presence and actions of CUMA members in their vicinity. At the extensive margin, increased peer-to-peer interactions, driven by a higher density of CUMA members, foster sociotechnical exchanges conducive to reducing pesticide use. At the intensive margin, if members individually make greater use of their CUMA, they collectively gain access to technologically advanced machinery assets, which leads to a reduction in pesticide use through improvements in technical efficiency. Our econometric analysis, based on a dataset provided by the National Federation of CUMAs covering 5793 individual cooperatives, fully supports the extensive-margin mechanism. The intensive-margin mechanism, however, is only observed for greater use of agroecological equipment by CUMA members, suggesting a rebound effect when it comes to conventional equipment. Overall, these results point to the idea of a ‘hidden agroecological transition.’