The North has about 500 cooperatives. A large part of them were represented on Wednesday during the first Cooperative Festival.
Place of meeting: a potato warehouse in Hellum. The event attracted hundreds of visitors.
The cooperative is ‘in’. The numbers speak clearly in this regard. The Netherlands had 5,000 in 2010, now there are more than 10,000, said Menko Rittersma, lawyer and researcher at Hanze University of Applied Sciences and the University of Groningen.
First step to counter
The initiators of the festival are the Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen and the cooperative insurer Univé. With the festival they want to take a first step towards the establishment of a counter where cooperatives can go with questions about, for example, tapping into funds, recruiting volunteers, legal, administrative or tax matters.
The intention is that students gain practical experience by looking for the answers. “We have 100,000 of them in Groningen,” said Willem Foorthuis, professor of Sustainable Cooperative Entrepreneurship at Hanze University Groningen.
In addition, the festival must become an annual event where cooperatives exchange knowledge and experiences. This was done with a series of interviews, workshops and the presence of information booths.
‘Time of neoliberalism’
The cooperative is an old legal form that in the past was mainly founded by entrepreneurs with the intention of achieving economies of scale; for example, farmers in the processing and marketing of their products, SMEs in the purchase of goods.
The new cooperatives are usually set up by citizens and often also entrepreneurs who want to maintain their living and living environment, if the government or the market fails to do so. They produce sustainable energy, maintain a supermarket, bookshop, care facility or swimming pool, work on a sustainable balance between nature and agriculture or, in a broader sense, monitor the residential and social climate in a region.
“We live in the age of neoliberalism,” said Foorthuis. “The government is withdrawing. It expects citizens to take their own responsibility more often.”
Earthquake damage
Hielke Westra, director of the Groninger Dorpen association, saw a role for cooperatives in spending the billions that the province receives as compensation for the earthquake damage. They can help residents to ‘keep their own direction’, he said. “A lot will be asked of them soon,” says Westra.
Cooperatives can also be the initiative of only entrepreneurs with a common goal. An example of this is De Graanrepublic in Bad Nieuweschans, where sustainably grown crops are traditionally processed into food and drink. “This started as an idea,” said director Niels Grootenboer. “Parties have been sought. Our cooperative includes large companies such as the VermaatGroep (catering, ed.) and Hooghoudt distillery, but also farmers and baker Wiebrand. And they all have an equal voice.”