AGRICULTURAL PROCESSING SOCIETIES SATS
In law, the SAT is a civil society in economic and social order established for the production, processing and marketing of agricultural, livestock and forestry products, improvements in rural areas, and promoting agricultural development and the provision of common services that serve this purpose.
The main difference comes from an agricultural cooperative that the SAT does not affect them the principles of free adhesion and voluntary resignation of members, open or variability in the number of partners and capital, in addition to economic agreements to that statutory partners commit the proportional vote to the individual participation capital by themselves rather than the rule of a cooperative member, one men, one vote.
Therefore, and because public policies to support the focus on companies in the primary sector, the Agricultural Transformation Societies are becoming the main production companies of reference in the field of Spanish agro farms. They are serving as legal entities for the economic development of rural areas, thanks to its essentially participatory, community and mutual nature.
The origin of this type of company is located in the so-called labor groups Colonization (GSC), associative forms created after the Civil War, as intermediate bodies between farmers, the so-called "Family gardens" and the state, with some semi-links and marking character consortium, whose purpose was to conduct improvement activities in rural areas to promote agricultural works and activities of all kinds, and achieved widespread, especially since the sixties. GSC success contrasted with the lack of an adequate legal framework for the figure, whose guidelines were developed inaccurately by various provisions, many of them public, which prevented proper framing in Spanish company law. The need to adapt the legal regime of this associative shape the new political and economic reality of the country, led to urgently reform process and conversion of the GSC began in a social type that could undertake with greater security challenges a more competitive agriculture. Specifically, the second additional provision, letter c) of Decree-Law 31/1977, was the rule paved the way for the conversion of the GSC in the new "Agricultural Transformation Societies" which eventually were regulated by Royal Decree 1,776 / 1981. The origin of the term "transformation" is not that these companies have the aim of transforming the products delivered by partners, but that this form of association is intended to transform the Spanish agricultural landscape, and somehow it did, since for years, especially until proceeded to better regulation of the legal regime for agricultural cooperatives in the late eighties, it was the benchmark of Spanish agricultural associations.
Today, The SAT are forming the productive engine of the Spanish countryside and one of the main instruments for the economic development of the agricultural sector, given the challenges they face in the XXI century. The opening of markets and internationalization require the commissioning business formulas for improved concentration and supply management, optimization of human and financial resources in the processing of agricultural products and ultimately improved competitiveness of the whole value chain. In addition, the SAT can be associated or integrated with each other to develop the same activities by creating a pool of SAT also with legal personality and capacity to act.
Moreover opposite the traditional fragmentation of the primary sector, the concentration of companies under various legal forms, including SAT, allow more direct involvement of producers in the food chain, bringing transparency to making own decisions transformation and marketing of agricultural products, livestock and forestry, while maintaining the economic activity linked to the territory as a key element structuring of rural environments.