Desempenho sustentável: uma análise junto as cooperativas agropecuárias da região central do Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

The cooperatives in the agricultural sector are essentially important for economy and development of the local and countryside communities, as well as for the entire nation. Thus, the permanence of these organizations depends on good results in economic, social and environmental sphere, the one that is reinforced by the seventh cooperative principle, which is based on the sustained development of the communities in which each one is inserted. For this reason, it was aimed, in a general way, to measure the sustainability in the agricultural cooperatives of the central region of Rio Grande do Sul, through an integration of aspects of environmental, social and economic dimensions, to analyze whether these cooperatives are in agreement with the seventh cooperative principle. For such, it was performed a case study, with a descriptive character and qualitative analysis of the data. The current data collection was made through a structured questionnaire proposed by Callado (2010). Therefore, this study provided the possibility to know the profile of agricultural cooperatives in the central region of Rio Grande do Sul, to investigate and analyze the position of these cooperatives in the Sustainability Grid Enterprise (GSE) proposed by Callado (2010), in order to demonstrate whether the analyzed cooperatives are complying with the seventh cooperative principle, which refers to the community interest, in other words, if these cooperatives are working for the sustainable development of its communities through its policies and actions. So, it was possible to observe that 40% of the studied agricultural cooperatives are totally sustainable and are according with the seventh cooperative principle.