International Day of Cooperatives 2023

The International Day of Cooperatives highlights the growth and progress of cooperatives all across the globe. These organizations help communities build better sustainable practices, shore up financial resources and develop socially progressive approaches to community building.

On this day, it’s important to shine a spotlight on those who are on the ground doing the good work of building a better future for us all.

At Dimitra, we’re committed to helping these communities grow with the latest agricultural technology. Let’s explore why this day is so significant and look at a few projects we’re excited about that support cooperative efforts worldwide.

What Is the International Day of Cooperatives?

On July 1st, the world will celebrate the 101st International Day of Cooperatives. United by the slogan “cooperatives for sustainable development,” this year’s event will highlight how the cooperative approach to working is a critical element necessary to meet the targets set by the U.N. in their Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) is one of the oldest and largest business networks in the world, and the drive to meet the SDGs is an intrinsic part of its DNA.

This year, the international community will reach the midpoint of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development — with the International Day of Cooperatives highlighting the contribution of cooperatives toward advancing and achieving the SDG.

Why Are Cooperatives So Important?

Cooperatives provide citizens access to vibrant local communities focused on improving the economic, social, cultural and political advancement of their members. These people-centered enterprises offer open-membership models that are owned, controlled and run by and for the members themselves.

As organizations driven by values, cooperatives don’t just think locally but also progress toward internationally agreed principles, like the SDGs. These groups are crucial in fighting against environmental degradation and climate change. In addition, they generate good jobs, contribute to food security and build ethical value chains.

Cooperatives allow people to take an active approach to their economic future. What’s more, since stakeholders don’t hold the reins, the economic and social rewards of their activity.

These businesses have a proven track record of resilience. As a result, this makes them the perfect partner for tackling the major challenges facing the international community and sustainable development efforts.

Dimitra Cooperative Spotlights

As a company on a mission to help farmers across the globe, we’re quick to highlight the good work of the international community here at Dimitra. In the past, we’ve brought awareness to worldwide sustainability efforts like World Water Day and World Population Day.

In the spirit of the International Day of Cooperatives, let’s explore several cooperatives that work with our technology to bring their communities closer together. What’s more, cooperatives create sustainable frameworks for financial, environmental, and social success.

Solok Radjo Cooperative

The Solok Radjo Cooperative is a progressive farming enterprise located in Indonesia. What’s more, it highlights the use of environmentally friendly farm practices to nurture the land under crops. One of the driving forces behind the cooperative is to help farmers learn to optimize the yield of their land. In particular, their focus is on coffee crops.

The cooperative of 3,300 coffee farmers helps members process and market the coffee fruits. In addition to coffee, the Solok Radjo Cooperative raises cattle. They sell the cattle to domestic markets and use the manure locally on plantations to boost soil health.

Using Dimitra’s Connected Coffee Module, farmers can open up new growth opportunities. This includes access to the students, lecturers and professors at Andalas University. Moreover, the goal behind this is digitizing the user experience and improving the platform. Through that, an industry-leading service is created that will benefit other farms.

In fact, by bringing farmers into the digital world through the Connected Coffee Module, the cooperative can accomplish quite a lot. Here are a few more standout benefits:

• The platform opens up new premium export markets, bolstering financial profitability and growth.
• Data collected from the app will find a home in Dimitra’s immutable records. This includes soil test results, satellite imagery and plant and tree coverage from farms.
• Powerful back-end ML and AI systems pull insights from tracked activities in the field. For example, soil sample traits and weather events provide actionable insights for farmers.

As the Head of the Solok Radjo project, Alfadriansyah (Adi), describes, “partnering with Dimitra is important for Solok Radjo to realize an integrated, data-based, sustainable coffee enterprise.”

Ahprocafe

Coffee plays a pivotal role in more than just Indonesia. Located in Honduras, Ahprocafe is an association of more than 100,000 coffee farmers across dozens of local cooperatives.

Their goal is to provide these farmers with state-of-the-art agricultural technology, more specifically, traceability and AI tech. In fact, as Honduras is the fifth largest coffee producer worldwide, this type of tech adoption is essential to shoring up this critical national export.

While we only announced earlier this year, Dimitra and Ahprocafe have big plans for the implementation of the Connected Coffee Platform:

• Provide traceability for coffee grown in the area
• Offer real-time track and trace across the supply chain
• Build transparent and credible businesses
• Attract new sustainability-savvy customers
• Improve pest management efforts
• Reduce climate change effects
• Deliver continuous data collection — informing data-driven decision making

“Ahprocafe seeks to strengthen the business capacity of affiliated coffee cooperatives and generate initiatives that allow us training support and potential market spaces,” says Manfredo Villanueva, Ahprocafe’s General Manager. He continues, “we faithfully believe that the alliance with Dimitra will allow us to achieve our objectives.”

To become involved with Ahprocafe and its work, consider exploring the Dimitra Sponsorship Program for Individuals.

Moving Forward: Dimitra’s Commitment and Mission

Lastly, as we celebrate the International Day of Cooperatives, it’s important to highlight the growth and progress of these organizations as they build a sustainable future for the world. Dimitra is proud to be a technology partner with these cooperatives, helping us both push forward and deliver ethical, sustainable and socially progressive farming practices worldwide.

For more information on Dimitra, our mission and our technology, be sure to check out our website and explore our other Medium posts for a deeper look into our work.