A case study on the agricultural cooperative COPAG

The milk and dairy sector is one branch of the food industry that has gone through the most rapid restructuring. This is partly due to the economic incentives offered by the State (the milk plan), but mainly to the organisational capacities of small and medium-sized producers.1 Although many cooperatives coming into the market have failed, there have been a number of successes, the biggest of which is undoubtedly COPAG, an agricultural cooperative based in the region of Souss Massa.This is the success story that we are investigating in this study, which has five main objectives:

• to consider the context and highlight the main innovations introduced by COPAG;

• to identify how its partners along the value chain have adopted these innovations;

• to determine the indicators of small and medium-sized producers' integration into the retailing and distribution circuit through their organisation (COPAG);

• to identify the key factors in the success of COPAG's organisational and operational model;

• to learn from this model and possibly use the experience in other regions of Morocco.

This publication forms part of the Regoverning Markets project.