Multi-actor arrangements for farmland management in Eastern Spain

Farmland abandonment is common in the southern EU countries. This complex phenomenon has a set of interlinked causes and consequences, among the latter the undermining of farmers’ cooperatives role as supply aggregators. The paper discusses a multi-actor farmland consolidation model that avoids some of the drawbacks identified by literature to some models of land mobilization, mostly transaction and agency costs. This model consists on a local-based strategy of common land management, led by a cooperative and supported by a set of external agents. As empirical evidences, we show the attitudes of cooperatives’ managers surveyed towards common land management and present a case study implementing this multi-actor model. This piece of evidence shows that strengthening social capital is crucial to the success of these social innovation experiences. •Besides other consequences, land abandonment is eroding cooperatives’ role.•Cooperatives in the Mediterranean region are starting to manage abandoned land.•Multi-actor arrangements can mobilize land avoiding transaction and agency costs.•Empirical evidences show that there is wide potential for these arrangements.