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This paper analyses the role of rural producers' organisations as elements of innovation processes in contexts characterised by subsistence-level agricultural production. The primary focus is on a group of producers' associations – cooperatives – in the district of Morrumbala (Zambezia Province, Mozambique) where the authors conducted a case study. The interdisciplinary methodology used combines economic and anthropological methods of analysis. The study results indicate that the cooperative organisation is a useful tool to mediate between the introduction of innovation and the transformation of the social context in which its members live. Moreover, the results show that producers' organisations are brokers that are able to introduce peasants to an accumulation pattern that does not eliminate redistribution dynamics. In effect, therefore, the social change imposed by the market system is mediated by the local social and cultural context.