The cooperative association as a factor of sustainability of the coffee system in marginalized communities

Abstract

Currently, the models of sustainable socioeconomic development have been studied with significant importance given the present multidimensional crisis, therefore in this contribution, the coffee production system of a marginalized area is analyzed with groups of associated producers and not, through an exercise of comparison through eight indicators derived from the general attributes of sustainability that consider the social, economic and environmental axes, with the objective of locating the determining factors of it and evidencing the importance of cooperative societies as a means to contribute to the development sustainable. This article was based on fieldwork that gathered both quantitative and qualitative information from producers and their production system with which an index was designed to identify the levels of sustainability of the production system. It was obtained that the associates present a higher Sustainability Index (SI), with explanatory factors that reside in the overpricing (economic axis), access to innovations and constant training (social axis). The gap between the maximum and minimum values of the IS of the producers was high, which shows that there are producers whose production is sustainable and others who do not. The results highlight the potential of coffee cooperatives as agents of socio-economic transformation in rural territories with different types of constraints, and it is concluded that there is a relationship between association and sustainability, that is, local cooperatives open the expectation of success and they contribute to the strengthening of the coffee sector.