Prickly Pears

The Cooperative’s work will have a very positive environmental and social impact :

• Production sustainability: even though prickly pears are one of the most significant and emerging wild plants with a significant number of producers, selling the whole production has been challenging due to the lack of scale of each individual producer. With promoters owning on average a land of around 1,5ha, they lack the financial capacity to buy the necessary equipment to prepare the fruit to be sold. With the cooperative’s creation, the bought equipment will be shared by everyone, hence increasing the quantity of fruit sold.
• Increased cultivation area, and better quality of the products: with the support of the cooperative, the revenue from all the cooperators will increase, allowing them to increase the cultivation area. Additionally, all the promoters can learn from each other, guaranteeing the products quality and the production’s sustainability.
• Valuation of the local production and positive economic impact on the region: the cooperative operation is in Vale do Poço, a small village with only 50 inhabitants in the interior of Alentejo. By benefiting the local commerce and restaurants, the cooperative will be able to attract more people to a region that suffers from desertification, having a positive economic impact on the region.
• More jobs: in a region where agriculture is the main activity, by increasing production and revenue, more jobs will be made available contributing to reducing the interior desertification.

Cooperativa OpuntiasAlentejo, Crl. is headquartered in Serpa and operates in a small town called Vale do Poço, both in Alentejo. Founded in 2019, the cooperative is the result of the union of several prickly pears producers. Its main goal is to generate enough business scale to guarantee the whole production is sold. On top of this, by joining efforts to market the products and by sharing equipment, its members will be able to reduce costs.

 Its main goal is to promote local agriculture, mainly through the cultivation of prickly pears, its cultivation, transformation, and marketing. Tomé Panazeite, an agronomist engineer with over 30 years of experience, is a founding member and the main responsible for the organization.

Its members chose to be in Vale do Paço due to the following:

• The town used to be a business hub in the past;
• It is a deprived area in the interior of Alentejo;
• It is a central location for all the members;
• It has the potential to create jobs, in a place where they are needed.

The cooperative has the following functions:

• Acquisition of the necessary equipment for the fruit exploration and trade to be used by all the cooperative’s members.
• Sharing of rural properties to keep the products (before and after transformation) between the members.
• Transformation, packaging, and marketing of the fruits and their derivatives.
• Organization of fairs, congresses, and other events.

Besides the mentioned functions, the cooperative will train its members so that they can opt for sustainable and environmentally friendly agriculture methods.