One of the sectors in which the cooperativism has a greater weight and strength in the Spanish agriculture is the virgin olive oil sector, which assembles the third part of the produced oil. This is a situation which does not occur in the final market where the presence of cooperatives in the sale of virgin olive oil, bottled with brand, is vastly inferior. This reality is one of the structural problems of the Spanish olive oil cooperativism and, in short, all this means that the olive growers stop receiving part of the added value which is generated in the food and agriculture chain.

In spite of the competitiveness of the olive oil and its future projection, above all, for the healthy character which people attribute to it (Mediterranean diet, etc.), in the present day, the members of cooperatives are in a difficult situation. This is characterized for (a) the strong pressure that big distribution companies exert on commercial margins of producers, result of the asymmetry in the power of negotiation in the food and agriculture chain and (b) the reduction, and possible disappearance of the community helps to the producers soon, with their direct consequences in the olive growers’ income, and the indirect ones, caused by the increase of the competence with other agricultures of lower costs –above all, labor costs. This situation becomes worse because of (c) the increase of the olive oil world production, particularly in countries where the internal demand does not absorb the production and, in consequence, part of this demand is assigned to foreign markets. Finally, and due to this entire situation, (d) the increase of inputs costs cannot be passed on to all the agents of food and agriculture chain, with the cooperative olive growers assuming almost the totality of them. This scene is summarized, in short, in the problems of an efficient commercialization of virgin olive oil; in the sense of the olive growers’ incomes depend on, basically, the efficiency which the product is commercialized with. In this described context, the relative importance of this activity will increase, in a short-term or long-term, over olive growers’ incomes.

This scene is the result of the events which have occurred through these last two decades, events which have needed a continuous adaptable response of the cooperatives to their environment. In this project we analyze if the commercialization of the olive oils, which has been made by the cooperatives, has progressed according to the environment, with the main objective of detecting a possible lack of adaptation which prevent the maintenance of their competitiveness in the market. For this, an evolutionary analysis of the commercialization carried out by the oil cooperatives is made. An analysis which is based on several studies made from 1992 to the present day.