landwirtschaftliche Genossenschaften#

Agricultural Cooperatives, Raiffeisen cooperatives, economic self-help associations in the field of agriculture. They replaced the live-stock breeding and trading associations of agricultural societies ( Landwirtschaftsgesellschaften) which were established after the peasants´ liberation in 1848. They date back to the model of the German social reformer F. W. Raiffeisen (1818-1888), who founded the first savings banks and loan societies (today Raiffeisenkassen) in Anhausen in the Rhineland area in 1862. In Austria they emerged in 1885 after pioneering work by G. Marchet (1846-1916) and on the initiative of J. Mitscha von Maerheim (1828-1907), who was a member of the Landtag as well as a bank manager and therefore knew about the credit problems of peasants in the 2nd half of 19th century. The first agricultural cooperative was founded in Muehldorf (Lower Austria) by mayor E. Vergani (1848-1915). The establishment of further agricultural cooperatives such as Warehouse Cooperatives and dairy and live-stock processing co-operatives followed, based on the organisational structure of the banks.

In 1998, 674 independent Raiffeisen banks, 129 warehouse cooperatives, 40 dairy cooperatives and several other processing cooperatives (a total of 1754 cooperatives) were part of the agricultural cooperatives. These independent cooperatives are members of the Austrian Raiffeisenverband which is the interest group of agricultural cooperatives, usually with provincial or federal head offices.

Agricultural cooperatives are economic bodies with a democratic structure; in 1998 they had about 2,178,997 members and employed about 44,000 persons.