Cooperation network and wine production in Italy (1961-2010)

Since the Second World War, wine cooperation in Italy experienced a phase of intense development. In many areas, the high fragmentation of land ownership pushed farmers to focus on crops with high added value, including viticulture. In this context, producer cooperatives began to spread. In addition to taking care of the grape harvest, vinification, and marketing of the finished product, wine cooperation also played an important role in supporting the activity of farmers by contributing to the improvement of the product. In the 50s and 60s, the wine market was mainly local. The cooperative wineries supplied the nearest cities without having to invest heavily in quality, with a production that took place in line with tradition. Starting from the 70s, however, there was a gradually reduction in the consumption of wine combined with an increase in demand of higher quality product that could be appreciated even in territories far from the places of production. The system of wine cooperation was thus affected by profound changes related to the improvement of the product, but also to a downsizing of the production and commercial structure, and to a growing link with the market that has been intensifying in the 80s and 90s. This research aims to reconstruct the role of Italian wine cooperation between the 60s of the XX century and the early XXI century. The characteristics of the cooperative phenomenon in the wine sector will be studied, the number and distribution of social wineries on the national territory and the trend of their production over time will be analyzed. For this paper, we will use statistical sources, censuses, and documents of the Italian Ministry of Agriculture, useful to frame the phenomenon of wine cooperation from a quantitative point of view, but also to estimate the contribution of social wineries to the improvement of national wine production.