Tierra Verde cooperative admissions face new scrutiny after membership dispute

The Cooperative Council of San Vicente will hold a special hearing on 5 August to review its membership criteria after the rejection of a 40-hectare farm application exposed a long-simmering disagreement over what kind of farm belongs in Tierra Verde's cooperative system.

The application, submitted in March by the Gutiérrez family for their parcel in the Río Esperanto valley, was denied in June by the council's admissions subcommittee on the grounds that the farm exceeded a 35-hectare ceiling written into the cooperative's founding charter but rarely enforced. The family has appealed, and the council's full membership will now vote on whether to uphold the subcommittee's decision.

The case has drawn attention from the Tierra Verde Assembly's agriculture committee and from the Federal Office for Cooperative Affairs in Meridian, which administers federal fair-price subsidies through the cooperative network. The office has asked for a written explanation of the council's criteria by mid-August.

What happens next could reshape how Tierra Verde's cooperative movement balances growth with the smallholder identity that has defined it since the region's founding in 1993.