Sustainable growth of the Spanish agricultural cooperatives

In a market as competitive as the present, growth is one of the objectives that companies seek, insofar as it can help them to remunerate the agents who intervene in the process of generating value. However, business growth is not without problems associated to the resources needed to achieve it, and that, if they are not compatible with the financial capacity of the company, could create liquidity tensions. Thus, to improve their competitiveness, it is important that the companies adjust their real growth to the desired (sustainable) growth. This question is applicable to the agricultural cooperatives, particularly when taking into account their peculiar characteristics. In this context, as its principal objective the present work aims to recognise the evolution in real growth in Spanish agricultural cooperatives and their degree of adaptation to the desired growth (sustainable growth). To that end an empiric study on a sample of Spanish agricultural cooperatives over a period of five years (2000-2004) was carried out. Our results indicate a certain imbalance between the rates of real and sustainable growth: although at the beginning of the period studied the rates showed an excess in real growth, in the latter years this tendency is inverted, and a slowing down in growth investments is detected. This situation could be justified by the special characteristics of this type of company, such as their mutualism, "open doors" policy, and restriction in profit sharing to their members, among others