Between an association that distributes farming supplies and a cooperative that owns a project and markets the crop lies a wide range of services that farmers are demanding. The debate over reforming cooperatives reveals that changing the texts alone does not answer the questions of who runs them, who oversees their funds, and how members’ contributions are turned into a benefit that returns to them in the field and the market.
On 29 July 2026, Mohamed Abdel Hafez, a member of the Agriculture and Irrigation Committee of the House of Representatives, called on the government to speed up the preparation of the amendments to Agricultural Cooperation Law No. 122 of 1980 and to send them to Parliament. He said that officials had announced the preparation of broad amendments to strengthen the role of agricultural associations, but the first legislative session ended, according to his statement at the time, without them being submitted, which he considered an unjustified slowness in a file linked to food security. This demand raises once again a question that goes beyond the date of the amendment: how can the associations recover their role in production, marketing and serving their members?
Abdel Hafez stressed that the continued operation of agricultural associations under the current laws has, in his view, caused their real role in providing support and services to farmers to recede. These services include health insurance and crop insurance, the provision of modern mechanisation, in addition to providing loans and facilities for direct marketing without intermediaries, and providing production inputs.
Abdel Hafez called on the Prime Minister and the ministers concerned to send the new amendments to Parliament quickly, so that they can be included on the legislative agenda of the second session, given their link to the food security file.
In 2025, Alaa Farouk, Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, also stressed the need to speed up the completion of the new draft law, after discussing the proposed amendments to the agricultural cooperatives law with Counsellor Mahmoud Fawzi, Minister of Parliamentary and Legal Affairs, emphasising the importance of agricultural associations returning to be “the farmer’s home”, providing him with all production inputs and financing services for small and medium-sized projects, and having an effective role in raising farmers’ standard of living and increasing their incomes.
According to the Minister of Agriculture’s statements published in February 2025, the number of agricultural cooperatives reached 6,911 associations, out of a total of 12,926 cooperative associations in various sectors, that is, more than half. The figure indicates the size of the agricultural structure at that date, and does not represent a new count conducted in 2026. Against this spread, the report, through interviews conducted in summer 2026, documents demands to reform elections, management, training and marketing, and a distinction between what needs a legislative amendment and what needs the implementation of powers that already exist.
Reading these figures requires separating institutional size from performance efficiency: the existence of thousands of associations does not on its own show the number of their active members, the volume of their sales or their ability to finance projects. It is therefore not right to turn the number into automatic evidence of success or failure; rather, it remains an entry point for understanding the scope of the reform the speakers are discussing, while it requires published data on services and results at every level of the structure.
Elections That Bring Life Back to the Associations
In this context, Hussein Abdel Rahman, head of the Farmers’ Syndicate, says that the role of cooperative associations is much broader than the tasks they currently perform. The role the associations play has declined considerably and has become limited to distributing fertilisers and chemicals to farmers, whereas their main role relates to marketing agricultural crops. He believes that distributing supplies is a task many can carry out, while the association is supposed to be a pioneer of agricultural development and to offer its members something broader than this task.
He explains to Zawia3 that one of the most important amendments to the current Law No. 122 of 1980 relates to conducting elections within cooperative associations, as he says that the same members have kept standing for election for decades, which reflects the system of dominance and control over agricultural associations and of centralisation, with ideas he describes as old. He believes that candidates must be evaluated and an attempt made to bring new blood into cooperative associations and to change their purpose, in addition to restoring their role as it was in the past and applying the cooperative systems of other countries within the country.
Abdel Rahman adds that the role of cooperative associations is not supposed to be confined to distributing fertilisers, noting that in the 1990s they had an effective role in combating pests and in collecting cotton from farmers and marketing it. He attributes the decline in their role to the fact that the minds running them suffer from old ideas and are not qualified to run them or to propose solutions to farmers’ crises, calling for a change of blood along with the updating of ideas.
He points out that the Syndicate took part in the community dialogue sessions chaired by the Minister of Agriculture in 2025, and demanded the provision of agricultural supplies, the return of crop marketing, and enabling agricultural associations to make modern and mechanised systems available. He also demanded the elimination of the administrative corruption present within the associations, according to what he tells Zawia3.
He comments on the amendments introduced by Law No. 204 of 2014 to the Agricultural Cooperation Law, saying that they do not meet farmers’ aspirations, and were not suited to the geographical expansion of the agricultural area and the increase in production with the increase in the number of farmers: “That is why we need continuous legislative amendments that keep pace with the times, but the new amendments are not implemented on the ground.”
An Economic Role in Search of Independence
For his part, Khaled Hammad, a cooperative expert and member of the board of directors of the Central Agricultural Cooperative Union, explains to Zawia3 amendments that he says were put forward in discussions attended by Minister of Agriculture Alaa Farouk and Minister of Parliamentary and Legal Affairs Mahmoud Fawzi. He explains that obstacles in Law No. 122 of 1980, and in the way it is applied even after its amendment by Law No. 204 of 2014, limit the associations’ ability to perform their multiple roles.
Hammad defines the associations as economic and social units that pool their members’ contributions and are run by them to improve their economic and social conditions. He rejects the imposition of conditions he considers unfair by way of guardianship, calling for state intervention for care and to solve strategic problems. In this he relies on Article 37 of the Constitution, which protects cooperative ownership and provides for its support and independence. Cooperative ownership is a category the Constitution distinguishes from private and public ownership, even if the source of the funds is members’ contributions. Hammad says that the role of these associations in agricultural activity has declined, and that their contribution to national income has become negligible in his estimation, but he does not provide a quantitative percentage for this decline. He raises a question about the share of responsibility borne by legislation and the share borne by those in charge of implementation, calling for the workers to be taken into account in the reform.
Cooperative Principles and the Limits of the Law
Hammad says that the amendment discussions addressed, among other things, Articles 6 and 46. He believes that the legislative framework and practice do not sufficiently reflect the principles of the International Cooperative Alliance, such as voluntary and open membership, democratic management, members’ economic participation, autonomy, education and training, cooperation among cooperatives and concern for the community. These are reference principles for the cooperative movement, not an international law that automatically cancels the conditions of Egyptian legislation or settles the question of its constitutionality.
Hammad criticises the military service condition as a restriction on participation. A review of the text of Article 46 after its amendment in 2014 shows that it concerns membership of the board of directors, and requires the completion of military service or exemption from it, not its completion alone. He also points to the previous restrictions on the participation of legal persons and private companies in projects. The text regulating this contribution relates to Article 8, not Article 6; the latter deals with the establishment of more than one association of the same type in the same area and the same structure. Law No. 204 of 2014 amended Law No. 122 of 1980, not the other way round. The amended text of Article 8 allows legal persons to contribute no more than 25% of the capital of the projects that cooperatives establish to develop agricultural production, with a share of the surplus according to the contribution, without this contribution granting the right to membership of the general assembly or the board of directors.
The same text allows cooperatives, after the approval of their general assemblies and after consulting the relevant general association, to establish joint-stock companies among themselves and to set up investment and commercial projects to develop the fields specified by the law, in accordance with the rules of the executive regulations. Hence, the question raised by the interviews is not the absence of all investment powers, but the limits of their use and the administrative and financial obstacles facing their activation.
This separation between project capital and association membership explains part of the debate about partnership with the private sector. Financing an agricultural project does not necessarily mean granting the financier the power to elect the association’s board. On the other hand, making partnership legally available is not enough to guarantee the project’s success: its feasibility, its management, holding those responsible for it accountable and how its returns are distributed remain matters that require clear decisions by the members and the competent bodies.
Training Members Before Burdening Them with Responsibility
Hammad explains to Zawia3 that among the other problems is the failure to activate training centres for association members, despite the importance in the law of activating training, education and cooperative culture, stressing that this contributes to cooperative members’ awareness of the competences of agricultural associations, so that “we reach a better level; there must be a minimum of academic qualifications so that their managers are able to run them strongly”, explaining that this helps operate them more efficiently, contrary to what is happening.
Khaled Hammad says that one of the problems of the Agricultural Cooperation Law is the inclusion in cooperative associations of holders of agricultural land who benefit from the services and support the state provides through them, because the nature of agricultural associations requires that membership be linked to the holding of agricultural land, as the holder is the direct beneficiary of the services the association provides. The cooperative expert criticises this because, in his view, it contravenes the principle of open membership, which is one of the principles of the International Cooperative Alliance.
He explains that cooperative associations operate according to a plan set by the general assembly. The general assembly represents the supreme authority in the cooperative association and includes the owners of the capital, and its competences include setting the plan that the association is committed to implementing during the year, while the board of directors runs the association and implements what the general assembly approves.
He states that the members of the general assembly are the real stakeholders in the cooperative association’s activity, and consequently a holder of agricultural land who meets the membership conditions participates in the general assembly, but he points out that this does not necessarily mean being a member of the board of directors.
Distinguishing between the beneficiary, the member and the board member allows a more precise understanding of the demand to open the door to participation. The general assembly discusses the members’ interests and the association’s plans, while the board of directors bears responsibility for implementing decisions and managing resources. The manager, for his part, has a different professional and administrative function. Mixing these levels could turn a demand to improve management efficiency into a condition that limits the joining of small farmers, or turn general membership into an automatic qualification for managing funds.
From Distributing Fertilisers to Marketing Crops
Hammad states, speaking to Zawia3, that the Agricultural Cooperation Law also needs the development of numerous mechanisms within cooperative associations, such as raising awareness of the smart card mechanism to support the farmer, spreading culture and informing all farmers of the competences of cooperative associations. He speaks of five practical areas for developing services and establishing development projects, so that the agricultural association can establish its projects and turn over its capital, support its members’ access to financing according to the regulating rules, provide agricultural production inputs and market the members’ products.
Hammad believes that activating these roles raises the associations’ contribution to the economy and eases the farmer’s suffering when marketing his crop. He cites, from what he was following at the time of the interview, the abundance of the tomato crop in various villages against consumer selling prices that ranged, according to him, between EGP 15 and EGP 20 per kilo. He attributes part of the imbalance to the absence of associations from marketing. These are prices the source cites for that period, not a monitoring of the price of tomatoes on the day of publication, and the interview does not provide a series of farm-gate, wholesale and retail prices that would on its own suffice to measure intermediaries’ margins or to prove a single cause for the gap.
He points out that addressing this requires, in his view, a dedicated stabilisation fund, so that specialised bodies support the farmer by taking over the marketing of his products, in a way that does not push him to lose his due or to sell the crops at exorbitant prices, but rather maintains the continuity of the farmer’s earnings.
Hammad proposes putting in place mechanisms that guarantee the farmer an appropriate minimum return so that he continues farming, along with processing low-priced crops to add value to them instead of leaving them exposed to loss. He believes that establishing factories and projects of this kind falls within the scope of what cooperatives can do, but this thinking is not disseminated or applied enough in local associations. He reiterates his objection to some of the conditions of Article 46, believing that they narrow the freedom of participation and voluntary work, while the distinction between joining the association and qualifying to manage its funds remains necessary.
On the literacy condition, Hammad recalls the debate over whether this condition is sufficient for managing funds that may reach, by his estimate, millions or billions of pounds. The old text included an exception linked to the absence of candidates who could read and write well, whereas the second clause of Article 46, after the 2014 amendment, requires proficiency in reading and writing without that exception in the text of the amended clause. Hammad calls for those who take over management to be qualified with an appropriate certificate or a course from an accredited centre, and to understand the competences of cooperatives before assuming responsibility. He criticises, in his estimation, some members joining in pursuit of social prestige without realising their responsibility for developing projects. The demands for administrative qualification do not mean that the Constitution or the principles of the International Alliance impose an academic certificate as a general condition for every beneficiary to join the cooperative.
These projects are numerous, according to Hammad, who says that there are associations that have set up development projects such as a project for producing honey from bees, producing poultry eggs and raising livestock; these projects were in the local associations.
Reforming Management and the Cooperative Structure
Saad Nassar, professor of agricultural economics at Cairo University and former governor of Fayoum, says, in the interview conducted for this report, that the ministry had finished preparing amendments, and that the step awaited at the time was presenting the draft to the Cabinet in preparation for sending it to the House of Representatives. He adds that the draft had not reached Parliament at the time he spoke, without the reason for the delay being known. This describes the stages of preparing a draft law, not an acknowledgement that the amendments were issued or entered into force; the Cabinet’s approval of a draft and its referral differ from its approval by Parliament and its promulgation.
Nassar says that agricultural cooperatives are independent, popular, democratic institutions that are self-financed and self-managed, to which the government provides technical support. Government supervision and oversight of them are within the limits that ensure the application of the law.
Nassar recommends, speaking to Zawia3, that the association’s manager should hold an appropriate qualification and have successfully completed a training course in cooperative management, and that he be appointed or seconded by the association’s board of directors, while encouraging qualified and competent people from among agricultural holders, whether small farmers (less than 10 feddans), large farmers or other categories of holders, within the percentages set by the law for running for membership of the associations’ boards of directors, and provided that the term of membership and chairmanship of the board does not exceed two terms, to achieve rotation of management and inject new blood.
Nassar adds that specialised cooperative associations should be limited to groups of strategic agricultural crops, to ensure the prevention of repetition, duplication and conflict with multi-purpose cooperative associations (credit, reform and reclamation).
He explains that the joint, central and general associations must each be a single association at the level of the district, the governorate and the republic, with the Central Agricultural Cooperative Union then at the top of the cooperative structure or edifice, comprising representatives of the central associations, the general association and the specialised associations, and five experts appointed by the Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation based on the nomination of the Central Agricultural Cooperative Union.
He says that it is important to unify the supervision and oversight exercised by the administrative authority (the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation) over agricultural cooperatives in a single administrative body within the ministry.
The proposals put forward by the speakers intersect at three interconnected links: a management that renews itself and is subject to accountability, training that enables members to understand their rights and duties, and an economic activity that goes beyond handing over supplies to production, processing and marketing. Their views differ in explaining where the breakdown lies, between the law and those who implement it, but they agree that the value of reform lies in the service that reaches the farmer. The proposals for restructuring, limits on membership terms and qualification mentioned in this report remain demands of the sources, not texts in force merely because they were raised in the dialogue.
