El cooperativismo agrario y su potencial para el desarrollo territorial: los casos de Chile y Uruguay

The aim of this paper is to investigate the potential of agricultural cooperatives to promote rural territorial development in Latin America, analyzing the cases of Chile and Uruguay. The origins, background and current status of the agricultural cooperative movement in these countries are reviewed, within the context of the development of the agricultural production sector and the regulatory frameworks in each country. This research assumes an endogenous development approach. Our motivation comes from the need to better understand those modes and relations of production that generate greater local appropriation of wealth and, therefore, greater local control of its use and reinvestment. The article seeks to discuss the link between economic growth and development with equity, putting at the center of the discussion how to organize production and social relations to produce, and not only focus on ex post redistributive policies. This implies promoting forms of organization of production that are competitive in the markets but, at the same time, generate territorial development with a more equitable distribution of wealth. In that sense, the document seeks to reflect on the potential of the agricultural cooperative movement to promote strategies for the populations of rural and urban regions to become protagonists of their own development process.