Cooperatives are partnerships of people who jointly seek to carry out actions that would be costly to perform individually. These organizations have their own legal form and nature which, among other characteristics, involve voluntary membership, inaccessibility of capital quotas to third parties, singularity of voting, and the return of net surpluses of the fiscal year proportional to the operations carried out by the partners. Research involving the theme of cooperatives covers a wide spectrum of possibilities, including cooperative identity, legal aspects, cooperative education, cooperative governance, social management of cooperatives, innovation and performance, strategy, finance, membership organization, inter-cooperation, and analysis of their social, economic, and environmental impact.

Articles should address topics related to strategy and competitiveness in the context of agro-industrial chains. Articles dealing with the issue of competitiveness and performance through the lens of strategy theories — positioning, resource theory, dynamic capabilities, transaction costs — will be accepted. Studies that approach competitiveness from systemic and relational perspectives, cooperation networks, and strategic alliances analyzing interdependence relations between agents, as well as marketing strategies, also fall within this scope. Studies discussing the implications of macro-institutional aspects in agro-industrial chains are also included in this topic.

Articles may address various aspects related to public management in agriculture: design and evaluation of policies (credit, commercialization, prices, technical assistance, technology, food security, food safety, labor relations, environmental legislation, etc.) that affect agriculture; the role of public management in agricultural transformations; evaluation of new policy and management conceptions; and impacts on efficiency, competitiveness, and sustainability.

Articles may address various aspects related to risk management and commercialization in the different agro-industrial chains, including the following topics: price forecasting, transmission, and volatility; price risk management instruments; production risk management instruments; risk and resilience; behavioral and experimental economics in risk management and commercialization decisions; market structure and price behavior; design of policies related to risk management and commercialization.

Articles may address various aspects related to technology and innovation in agriculture: the impact of new technologies (4.0, IoT, etc.) on agricultural management and productivity; adoption of new sustainable technologies in agriculture (low-carbon agriculture, recovery agriculture, etc.); policies to incentivize technology adoption in rural areas (credit, taxation); research and innovation networks in agriculture; and technological diffusion systems in agriculture (cooperatives, public agencies, input companies, etc.).

Debates on sustainability in agro-industrial systems are broad and involve a continuous creative effort. In this sense, the section description should not be understood as a limiter for proposing articles with innovative approaches to the theme. Articles will discuss topics related to the design of sustainable value chains or networks — for example, based on the principles of the circular economy — and strategies aimed at solving environmental or social challenges. Possible topics to be discussed include the reduction of food waste and the mitigation of carbon emissions. Another possibility is the discussion of the foundations for value creation derived from the adoption of strategies based on the pursuit of sustainability. Finally, papers may discuss the process of emergence and consolidation of alternative food production and distribution systems.