Danish cooperative movement

The Danish cooperative movement (Danish: Andelsbevægelsen) was a means of economical organization under leadership of consumer- or producer-controlled corporations, where each individual member owned a part of the corporation. The type of organization was especially used in the farming industry and in consumer organizations in Denmark from the 1790s to the 1960s. The members of the corporations sought to share the economic stress of producing or buying goods, and divided the eventual end-year financial surplus amongst them. The type of ownership rules varied greatly between individual corporations, as some divided the financial risk equally, while others gave more power to the most financially involved individuals.

About 90% of all farming soil in Denmark was cooperative from 1300, as the Black Death depopulated the rural parts of the country. Then, the inhabitants of a Danish village would work together, forming Landsbyfællesskaber (village communes). To distribute land fairly between farmers, the land was normally distributed between all farmers in a village with each of them owning a strip of land on every field. Re-allocation of land took place if the size of the individual families changed strongly. In this system, it was virtually impossible to only work individually, since the plots of land might have the full length of the field, but only be a few meters wide. A second characteristic was that all farms were located close together and near the church, with the result that fields far from the village were often poorly utilized.

This all changed in the enclosure movement between 1750 and 1800, which aimed to reunite fields and award them to one owner only. Any farmer would normally be awarded a coherent piece of land and perhaps an additional piece of forest. In many villages, farmers were either forced or strongly encouraged to tear down their homes and rebuild them in the middle of their new fields with the intention that this would give them easier access to every part of the field, enabling them to utilize the land more effectively. These events are known as Landboreformerne (the agricultural reforms) or Udskiftningen (the parcellation), and were instigated at the initiative of the Danish Crown to raise production. For the next century, a standard village would be composed of a series of farms, many located a distance from each other, each family working for itself producing grain and raising a few animals.

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