STUDY | Co-operatives: an economy rooted in the community – Terram Institute

ABSTRACT

Authors of the study: Nadine Levratto, Abdoulaye Kané and Luc Tessier, Terram Institute, October 2026 (62 pages).

Cooperatives (mutual banks, agricultural cooperatives, SCOPs, retail networks) are present in almost every sector, but their regional impact is poorly understood. The authors address this gap using INSEE’s individual records (Flores, Flores Postes, Fare) and measure, department by department, the number of establishments,employment, total wage bill, turnover,gross operating surplus (GOS) and net profit for 2016, 2019 and 2023.

Their argument is threefold. The rules governing their status (‘one member, one vote’, indivisible reserves) make these enterprises more difficult to relocate. Cooperatives appear to have weathered shocks better than conventional firms (pre- and post-Covid comparisons by sector). They complement the dominant model and deserve specific public policies.

Four recommendations emerge from this study:

• Strengthen support for regions where cooperatives have a limited presence (Overseas Territories, Centre-Val de Loire, Corsica, parts of Occitanie)
• Develop appropriate financial instruments, such as cooperative investment certificates
• Encourage the transfer of businesses in cooperative form, including via SCICs (co-operative societies of collective interest)
• Facilitate the takeover of struggling businesses by their employees

The authors also call for a single statistical definition of the cooperative sector, based on legal status.

This report sheds light on an economy often absent from statistics, using a rigorous and transparent methodology regarding its scope. Three key findings emerge. Whilst the cooperative sector is modest in size (1 per cent of employment), it is highly regionalised, rooted in long-established sectoral strongholds. Co-operative employment outside the financial sector is dynamic, whilst the co-operative financial sector is undergoing restructuring. Performance since 2019 has improved, partly due to economic conditions and agricultural prices. However, whilst the deep-rooted nature and superior resilience of the cooperative model are plausible, they remain to be demonstrated (there are no indicators of deep-rootedness, such as the proportion of local purchases, nor business survival rates to measure resilience, for example). The recommendations are consistent with the analysis, but there is no assessment of their cost or effectiveness.

Keywords: local roots, regional roots, cooperatives, agricultural cooperatives, social and solidarity economy (SSE), employment, democratic governance, non-divisibility of reserves, wage bill, resilience, cooperative societies of collective interest (SCIC), SCICs, cooperative and participatory societies, SCOPs, regions.

Illustration: © Institut Terram