Surviving together The development of alpine dairy cooperatives and their importance to preserving mountain farming in South Tyrol J. Christian Rainer ountains leave their mark. They leave most important mainstay for nine in ten moun- their mark on the landscape, the people tain farmers. M and the economy. This is no different in A second characteristic of alpine farming in South Tyrol, 86 percent of the area of which lies South Tyrol is the small size of the individual at altitudes above 1000 metres. Moreover, as only farming operations. Farms here cultivate 14 hec- around one-third of the entire area is used for agri- tares on average and have no more than 13 cows. culture, South Tyrol is a land not only of moun- These figures may sound ridiculous when com- tains but also of the mountain farmers who oper- pared to large farming operations in favourable ate farms here at altitudes of 800 to almost 2000 settings. Above all, however, they raise a question: metres above sea level. At altitudes like these, the How can a farm of this size survive in a market choice of farming methods is limited; milk is the characterised by agricultural giants? CHAPTER 8: ITALY Collaboration in cooperatives Tyrolean products opened up. So it was the rail- as a recipe for success road that parted the heavy, conservative curtain that surrounded South Tyrol. It brought in fresh The answer to this is a recipe with two ingredients. ideas and, with them, new political freedoms. It The first: The vast majority of alpine farms in South opened up new markets, and with them came Tyrol are run as supplementary and secondary oc- hitherto-unimagined opportunities for economic cupations. This alleviates the farm from existen- development. tial pressures. The focus of this article, however, Both developments provided the inspiration is on ingredient number two: on the collaboration for establishing the first agricultural cooperatives among farmers in cooperatives that perform near- in South Tyrol. The former development – those ly 100 percent of the joint collection, processing fresh ideas and new freedoms – paved the way, and marketing of milk produced in South Tyrol. politically and socially, in the form of the Aus- Thus, it is not the single mini-operation that con- tro-Hungarian freedom of association, on the one fronts the competition on the market. Instead, it is hand, and the social-reformist approaches of Frie- a combination of mini-operations that join forces drich Wilhelm Raiffeisen, on the other. The latter to attain a considerable size – and thus a certain development – the opening of new markets – pre- market power. sented farmers with completely new challenges To understand the roots of agricultural cooper- that called for new solutions. atives in South Tyrol, one must consider their his- So it came as no accident that in June 1875, just torical development. Even in the mid-19th century, four years after the opening of the railway line mountain farmers in the southern part of Tyrol through the Puster Valley in the east of South Ty- were mostly subsistence farmers who could dis- rol, an alpine dairy cooperative was launched: the tribute only a few of their products in the imme- ‘Registrierte Erste Swarz’sche Sennerei-Genos- diate vicinity: selling them to neighbours, to a few senschaft Hochpusterthal in Innichen mit unbes- villagers nearby or at small markets. This model of chränkter Haftung’. This would have been the first direct marketing was particularly suited to milk, South Tyrolean alpine dairy cooperative, and in not least because it was perishable. Long trans- fact the first South Tyrolean cooperative in gen- port routes were out of the question. The model eral, if the board of directors of the cooperative had of ‘From the udder to the churn to the table’ was not waited until 1879 to register their organisation the order of the day. For centuries, there was no in the Register of Cooperatives. Consequently, the need to deal with the laws of the market, supply title of the first officially recognised alpine dairy and demand, or considerations of competition cooperative in South Tyrol meandered a few kilo- and pricing. metres down the valley: to the ‘Registrierte Sen- nerei-Genossenschaft Niederdorf m. b. H.’, which was entered to the Register of Cooperatives on 12 The railway as an engine March 1878. for development But regardless of the registration date: the pio- neers of the cooperatives of South Tyrol were five All this changed in 1867 when the first train crossed farmers, innkeepers and businesspeople from the Brenner Pass. This marked the first time that Innichen who recognised early on – and tapped Tyrol to the south of the Alps was linked to the rest into – the new opportunities that the railway had of the empire by modern transport. Just four years opened up. Right from the outset, their alpine later, the railway opened up the Puster Valley, and dairy cooperative was running full-tilt; the South- in 1881 the spa town of Merano was connected to ern Railway itself was among the alpine dairy co- the rail network. The railway proved a catalyst for operative’s largest customers. Butter in particular development: tourism perked up, new guests dis- – which seems to have been highly sought-after at cover the countryside, and new markets for South the time – was delivered to the empire. The com- 76 pany that ran the Southern Railway thus asked the Raiffeisen’s idea of reciprocity and the organ- cooperative to ‘bind the crates with wire and seal isational form of the cooperative offered a way them to prevent butter from being “stolen away”’. out of this dilemma: the disadvantages of small structures could be compensated by joining forc- es, yet without requiring the farmers to give up A model catches on their independence. Rather than deliver milk to a large operation in the hands of an entrepreneur, As could have been expected, in the years that fol- the mountain farmers of South Tyrol opted to lowed, the successful cooperative model that had try to use joint farms of their own to collect, pro- originated in the Eastern Puster Valley caught on cess and market their members’ milk. This made in the South Tyrolean dairy industry. Fifteen addi- the individual farmer not an insignificant cog in tional alpine dairy cooperatives were established an anonymous system but rather a member and between then and the outbreak of World War I. hence co-owner of a cooperative that, thanks to its The economic success of the first cooperatives size, could operate as a market player. may be a reason for this development. Another is probably because the subsistence farm had come to an end with the Industrial Revolution and the The watershed of war and fascism consumption and commerce of goods it fuelled. Elsewhere, this transition led to the demise of However, the pioneering period of the alpine the farm, to rural exodus and urban misery. Not dairy cooperatives in South Tyrol in the early 20th in South Tyrol. Here, where farmers have always century was followed by a phase in which the co- been masters of their own fate, the independence operatives had to fight for their survival. First, the so deeply rooted in agrarian DNA was a value the alpine dairy cooperatives nearly dried up as a re- locals did not easily want to forfeit. sult of the First World War. This was followed by Handwork: The greatest logistical challenge for the cooperatives was (and remains) the daily collection of milk. Shown here is the collection of milk at the Marling alpine dairy in 1958. CHAPTER 8: ITALY the award of South Tyrol to Italy, closing down dies – especially through Brussels – ensured that the cooperatives’ access to long-standing mar- the South Tyrolean cooperatives grew too small kets. This is why it could be said that in the early and suffered one drawback in particular. Because 1920s they had to start over from scratch, under machines are only usable to a limited extent on new conditions, subject to new rules, speaking a steep meadows, the feed base and cattle density new language and establishing new distribution are both low, and production costs in mountainous networks – this time to the south. terrain are significantly higher than in favourable Paradoxically, it was fascism that brought the locations. In the wake of exponential growth in the alpine dairy cooperatives a second boom phase. cross-border exchange of goods during the 1960s, Between 1923 and 1929 alone, 15 new coopera- 1970s and 1980s, this meant that the market for tives were established and joined the 17 already raw milk market promised little success for South in exis tence. The reason for this boom was sim- Tyrolean producers. Quality hardly counts here, ple and – like so many others – lay in the survival and the only argument that counts is the price. In instinct of the regime. To prevent social unrest, this price war, the dairy farmers of South Tyrol in- an effort was made to ensure that the population evitably – or better: naturally – came up short. would be kept supplied with the vital necessi- ties, even in the years of the economic crisis. And these necessities undoubtedly included milk. Be- The picture following cause the regime was concerned for public health concentration and specialisation as well, hygiene standards for milk were raised as well. The alpine dairy cooperatives of South Tyrol re- Cooperatives thus enjoyed the support of the sponded to this market development with a strate- ruling regime; in some cases, they were even given gy of concentration and specialisation. What were a monopoly in the milk trade, as happened in the originally 36 small and micro cooperatives were City of Brixen in 1929.