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Abstract
Agricultural cooperatives in Brazil, as in other countries, develop through
vertical integration in order to promote industrialization of the agricultural
product and to aggregate the value of agricultural commodities. The vertical
integration strategy was a predominant business planning adopted by Brazilian
agricultural cooperatives in the 1980s. It was responsible for greater assets in
cooperatives, larger agro industrial plants, and higher debt structure. Nowadays,
it is possible to observe new agro industrial cooperative organizations in
Brazil called "Virtual Cooperatives." These virtual organizations do not
possess significant assets or industrial plants, but represent a network that
has a particular business strategy in the markets. In order to discuss virtual
cooperatives, this paper describes the agricultural cooperatives in Brazil, the
globalization process, and the institutional environment that has given rise
to virtual cooperatives. The paper also describes the nature of a virtual
cooperative, and the advantages and disadvantages when these organizations
are compared to traditional agro industrial cooperatives. Two different virtual
cooperatives cases studies are presented.