cooperatives

Four young farmers start Stone Soup Farm Co-op, on front of worker-owned farm trend | GazetteNet.com

As a supporter of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, I hope that the expansion of worker cooperatives is as wide as the marketing cooperatives were in an earlier time among farmers. I would like to see market organizations spend some of their time searching for funding to add new farmers and especially encourage new cooperatives. Cooperatives might be especially useful within certain types of markets, like food security markets.

“Each person manages a specific part of the farm. Barnett is in charge of the harvest and what gets included in the CSA shares, as well as some aspects of crop production such as irrigation. DiLorenzo does the bookkeeping, office work, and creates daily and weekly plans to make sure production is on track. Harro oversees the greenhouse production and seeding, and Man takes care of the chickens, maintains the equipment and oversees the apprentices.The four worker-owners, who all live in Hadley, receive equal monthly stipends as pay and if there are any profits at the end of the year, they will get dividends. They declined to say how much their stipends are.”

Four young farmers start Stone Soup Farm Co-op, on front of worker-owned farm trend | GazetteNet.com.

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A Koi-Fueled Nursery in New Orleans Yields Tasty Profits

Thanks to Sanjay for sharing this; I have followed VEGGI’s emergence and believe that their efforts are one of the best examples of entrepreneurial farming combined with technology solutions and will benefit many farmers, rural and urban alike. The VEGGI cooperative and cooperatives like it are one of the best ways that small lot farmers can truly become economically sustainable and avoid the burnout of a one-farmer endeavor and how urban initiatives can learn quickly enough to benefit the region.

A Koi-Fueled Nursery in New Orleans Yields Tasty Profits – Wired Science.

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Sustainability summit

Here at the Cleveland Sustainability Summit looking through their “Sustainability Dashboard”:
Local Food Accomplishments for 2013 include:

Growhio planning a follow up summit in February of 2014 to identify critical gaps in the local food economy
Menu For The Future grants and courses have supported canning workshops and offered funding for activities at City Rising Farms in Hough.
Community Kitchen Incubator Forum held to celebrate the launch of many incubator and certified kitchens in the area.

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News & Events | VEGGI Farmer’s Cooperative

This is a new Vietnamese-led growers initiative in New Orleans. I hope we begin to see more production cooperatives among farmers, especially urban and peri-urban farmers.

News & Events | VEGGI Farmer's Cooperative.

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Starting a Purchasing Cooperative Webinar

I think purchasing cooperatives could be very useful for market producers or even neighboring markets.

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DAWN Launches Rural Worker Cooperatives Assistance Program | Democracy at Work Network

I do think that one of the emerging trends that is coming to community food system work – especially markets – will be worker cooperatives. Take advantage of the excellent peer work that DAWN offers to learn more about this and to assist rural farmers and producers in your area.

DAWN Launches Rural Worker Cooperatives Assistance Program | Democracy at Work Network.

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Rural Co-ops Show the Way to Urban Job Growth – Politics – Utne Reader

Recently, I have worked with US Federation of Worker Cooperatives as a way to further my efforts as a trainer for markets and food systems. Thankfully, the USF0W is willing to share skills and resources from their excellent DAWN network with other sectors. Worker cooperatives differ from marketing cooperatives in that their very definition is about workers being involved in the decision-making in their workplaces. Marketing cooperatives are often a loose confederation of separately owned businesses marketing products or services together. Both types exists within the market movement, and both types need to be understood better so they can be encouraged more.
The article below talks about rural co-ops and their effect on urban job growth. Effective language and one finds some practical language for markets interested in using co-op techniques to encourage real growth, just as urban communities have done by learning from their rural neighbors.

Rural Co-ops Show the Way to Urban Job Growth – Politics – Utne Reader.

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Growing For Markets article on Toronto’s World Crop Project

I heard about this wonderful collaboration when I was there in April working with the Greenbelt Farmers’ Market Network. I decided to do an article to share it with the U.S., so where better than Growing For Markets? You’ll need a subscription to get full access, but you’ll thank me for this magazine if you do….

MY GFM article on World Crops

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Local First Webinar Series | BALLE – Business Alliance for Local Living Economies

BALLE is one of my go-to organizations, partly because their deep reservoirs of knowledge come from localized economy leaders, rather than some academic institution or a centralized big-city NGO. Therefore, their knowledge and growth seems to be thoughtful and they advance real ideas. Their webinars are done well and the next two focus on local procurement in government contracts.

Local First Webinar Series | BALLE – Business Alliance for Local Living Economies.

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How Veggie Co-ops and Ice Cream Collaboratives Could Save the Economy | Mother Jones

This entrepreneur throws some great numbers out in this excellent blog post and also entices us all with visions of local ice cream and veggies at what he, very interestingly calls a winter food bazaar. That typology term may fit in quite nicely to the project that we call Market CITY (Characteristics, Indicators and Typology)
His reference to Civic Economics and Ken Meter’s work is not surprising, since their reports (along with Michael Shuman at BALLE and Jeffrey O’Hara at Union of Concerned Scientists) make up much of the data that we are using to build the economic argument for local food systems.

How Veggie Co-ops and Ice Cream Collaboratives Could Save the Economy | Mother Jones.

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Community Supported Enterprises

Just attended a very useful workshop on Community Supported Enterprises, a model for investments for local businesses.I’ll leave my questions to the end after I give you some details…
3 examples were profiled:
Claire’s Restaurant, Hardwick Vermont is a LLC (actually 2 LLCs) that has 3 groups involved: investors in the real estate group, owner/managers (3 people) and 50 subscribers/lenders.

The one owner raised money by knocking on doors and reaching out to her network, since she was the only long-time Vermonter among the (3) owners.
She found investors who invested in the real estate group which owns the lease (and subleases to the restaurant) and the equipment. Their investment is very long-term and they were told that at the beginning. If the restaurant fails, they can get someone to take over the new lease.
The subscribers/lenders gave 1000.00 each to the restaurant itself and get their money back in increments of 25.00 in 10 months of the year over 4 years at the restaurant. The subscribers can transfer ownership of their subscription and family can use the subscription. There is no cash out provision. Since the restaurant does not own the equipment, it does not have major debt.

The Community Store, Saranac Lake NY
Is a C-corporation and has a board of directors of 7 and 3 full-time staff. Issued stock at 100 each to NY residents, goal was to raise 500,000, which took 5 years to do.
Shares can be transferred to out of state holders after 9 months. Since there is no majority stockholder, there is little chance for formal financing.
They ended the offer with 750 investors, mostly by asking their early shareholders to host “share” parties where board members could sell stock. Did constant events to keep their name and idea in front of people throughout the 5 years. Got the last 42,000 because of an in-depth New York Times story on cover of Sunday edition.

Co-op Power
Massachusetts, Southern Vermont
Classic member cooperative, different levels of membership:
Standard: 975.00 over 2 years
Farmer: 750.00 over 2 years
Limited Resource: 500.00 over 2 years
Buying Group: 250.00 over 2 years
Green Worker: 50.00 plus 6 months of work at Co-op Power

They also raise money through project loans for specific projects:
Biodiesel Project: 500.00 min, 5 years, 650k raised
Energy Efficiency Project: 500.00 min, 2-5 %, 5 years, 90k raised.

Here are the questions that occurred to me:
So, why haven’t farmers markets taken this model to find their start up?

And why don’t we see more cooperatives at market management level?,’

And why not project loans among the shoppers and farmers for short-term projects to create merchandise or an earned income stream for the market or for a farmer?

http://www.clairesvt.com

http://www.community-store.org

http://www.cooppower.coop/

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