Strengthening sustainable trade structures: JLU research project WERTSCHÄTZEN represented at the Darmstadt Transformation Days
Giessen/Germany, March 10, 2025. Cooperative grocery shops focus on an alternative way of trading: As consumer cooperatives, they not only enable their members to participate and actively contribute, but also offer high-quality organic food at fair prices. By working with small local producers, they also promote a special understanding of the value of regional products. In the WERTSCHÄTZEN project, a research team from Justus Liebig University Giessen (JLU) is investigating the role of these co-operative food shops in establishing and strengthening organic regional value chains. One aim of the WERTSCHÄTZEN project is to further promote the spread of these shops and encourage entrepreneurship in the context of cooperative business models.
‘High price pressure on upstream stages, market-determining quality expectations and established logistics and procurement structures mean that market access for small producers and processors of regionally produced organic food is more difficult,’ explains project manager Prof Dr Christian Herzig, Professor of Business Management in Food Economics and Agribusiness at JLU. ‘Many of the co-operative grocery shops in Germany are focusing on fair and livelihood-securing pricing for suppliers as an alternative to existing approaches,’ adds Kristina Gruber, coordinator of the project at JLU. The two researchers and the WERTSCHÄTZEN project team at JLU are working on issues relating to the transformation of the agricultural and food industry towards a more socially just and ecologically sustainable economy based on cooperative and co-operative management. The research and practice network for co-operative and cooperative management in the agricultural and food sector at JLU (ForWerK), which is open to interested parties from research and practice, provides a framework for this.
There are already several co-operative food shops in Germany. The JLU team works closely with the FoodHub Munich, SuperCoop Berlin, Köllektiv Cologne and SuperCoop Bremen. These shops are organised as cooperatives, giving members extensive opportunities for co-determination. In return, the members also lend a hand: they commit to working three hours a month, for example putting away goods, cashing up or collecting deliveries. This saves on labour costs, which benefits all members of the cooperative.
JLU is taking part in the Darmstadt Transformation Days in March with the WERTSCHÄTZEN project. The event, organised by the Schader Foundation, is taking place for the seventh time this year and is dedicated to the transformation towards a sustainable, socio-ecological economy with a focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Together with the Central Association of German Consumer Cooperatives (ZdK) and SuperCoop Berlin, the WERTSCHÄTZEN project is organising a workshop entitled ‘Cooperative grocery shops: making a different kind of shopping possible’ on 25 March 2025 from 10 am to 2 pm.
A welcome by Kristina Gruber and Prof Herzig will be followed by talks on cooperatives in the food industry (Mathias Fiedler, ZdK), the concept of cooperative grocery shops (Clara Menke, JLU) and SuperCoop Berlin as a practical example (Matthias Kasper, SuperCoop Berlin). Together with the workshop participants, questions on the motivation of the members, the cooperation with producers and suppliers, the cooperative legal form and the further dissemination of the concept of cooperative food shops will then be discussed in a World Café. Interested parties can register for the individual events of the Darmstadt Transformation Days via the website.
The research team was also represented at the world’s leading trade fair for organic food, Biofach in Nuremberg in February, where it organised a panel entitled ‘Together, fair, trade – cooperative grocery shops to strengthen organic regional value chains!’ together with Tom Boothe (La Louve, Paris) and Kristin Mansmann (FoodHub, Munich).
The WERTSCHÄTZEN project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture on the basis of a decision by the German Bundestag as part of the Federal Organic Farming Programme and will run until summer 2026. A workshop for founders of cooperative grocery shops is planned for spring next year at JLU.
Further information:
(http://www.uni-giessen.de/ibae/wertschaetzen)
(http://www.uni-giessen.de/ibae/forwerk)
(https://www.schader-stiftung.de/veranstaltungen/aktuell/artikel/dtdt25)
(Darmstädter Tage der Transformation 2025)
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