Co-operative trades with its own currency

In the south of Costa Rica farmers have been struggling for years to obtain plantation lands from international fruit companies. They have succeeded and at this moment various flourishing co-operatives are active. Now the time is right for the next step: being that transactions between suppliers, employees and customers of one co-operative should occur in their own currency. In the near future, the transactions among the various co-operatives should also occur in that particular currency. Further, there are development plans regarding bio-fuel and eco tourism.

CoopeSilencio offers numerous provision
In the southern region around the city of Quepoz about fifteen co-ops work together in the federation FECOOPA. One of its largest members is the agricultural co-operative CoopeSilencio and its main activity is the cultivation of palm oil fruits. Besides this, CoopeSilencio manages a restaurant, a shop, a hotel and a PC centre. Furthermore, Silencio is active in numerous fields: they give trainings to farmers, are responsible for the organisation of a children’s day-care centre, a school and health care.
The Co-op even offers social services: they provide eight senior former employees and farmers with a pension. The Co-ops employs 66 people and about 600 people – farmers and their families – earn their living via the Co-op.


In the southern region around the city of Quepoz about fifteen co-ops work together in the federation FECOOPA. One of the largest of them is the agricultural co-operative CoopeSilencio, its most important activity being the cultivation of palm oil fruits. Furthermore, CoopeSilencio manages a restaurant, a shop, a hotel and a PC centre.
Besides, Silencio is active in numerous fields: it gives trainings to farmers and it is responsible for the organisation of a child care centre, a school and health care.
The Co-op even offers social services: so it provides a pension to eight old, former employees and farmers. The Co-ops employs 66 people. About 600 people – farmers and their families – earn their living via the Co-op.

Salary in their own currency
The present-day intensive trade flows within CoopeSilencio are a solid base for the circulation of local money. With own money it is possible to grant interest-free loans, which in turn stimulates trade between households and small businesses who sell regional products, such as baking oil, eggs, vegetables, papayas, pork meat and organic vegetables.
Farmers earn this “Co-op money” by supplying palm fruits and in turn they can use this money to make purchases in the shop. Co-op employees partly receive their salaries in Co-op money.

Bio-fuel and eco tourism
The FECOOPA co-operations are going to co-operate in a C3. This means that mutual transactions are carried out with administrative units and that such a unit is their own currency. This means a considerable expansion of the number of participants and the possibility for people with Co-op money to buy and sell a wider variety of products.

From 1985 onwards palm trees (Palma Africana) have been planted. Its fruits can be processed into bio-fuel. Since local production leads to an increase in employment, there are plans to set up a factory. Also an increase of eco-tourism development is on the programme, since the region has a large appeal on tourists due to its beautiful river.

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