Consumer Co-operatives Worldwide (CCW) and the International Co-operative Agriculture Organisation (ICAO) held a joint session on 16 November 2017 within the framework of the Alliance Global Conference in Malaysia.
The theme was “Building Direct & Sustainable Supply Chains”, which explored the successful practices on national level of direct collaboration between agricultural and consumer co-operatives.
The Session opened with key messages by Prof Petar Stefanov – CCW President and Ki-hoon KIM – Deputy Secretary General of ICAO and NACF – National Agricultural Co-operative Federation of South Korea. Prof Stefanov highlighted the vital importance of scaling up co-operative trade opportunities, as this would create additional opportunities for growth for co-operative enterprises.
Consequently, this would have a three-fold effect: 1) support for the true social economy, which was established over 170 years ago by none other than co-operatives; 2) position co-operatives as appropriate partners to national governments in the fight against the grey economy, and 3) generate a real contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, since co-operatives have an inherent commitment to sustainable development.
The case studies of direct supply chains at national level included: Bulgaria, Japan, Malaysia, Sweden and Uganda.
The session concluded with an interesting presentation made by a consumer co-operative start-up within the network of Central Union of Consumer Societies – Centrosojuz in the Russian Federation. The co-op has created an online platform - “Coop Connect” – with wide infrastructure that connects the co-operative movement digitally at international, national, regional and local level. One of the platform’s modules allows the creation of an online marketplace, where agricultural co-operatives can directly connect with consumer co-operatives and, thus, reinforce the establishment of direct supply chains.
Photo: CCW and ICAO joint seminar in Malaysia
