A Cooperative Proposal:
Why we should create a producers' cooperative for
small organic growers in the area (v1.0)
Aric McBay
Introduction: I've spoken to a number of people this spring who are planning on starting small organic farms or gardens, either this year or next. I think it's great that more people are interested in organic farming and want to do it. The challenge comes when we risk saturating the farmers' market with similar kinds of produce, spending an undue amount of effort trying to market that produce, and generally compete with each other when we don't necessarily need to do that.
I believe that a producers' cooperative, which would pool many skills and resources and share marketing tasks, is an excellent solution to many of the challenges facing small (and especially young) organic growers in the area. The reasons I feel this way are numerous, as discussed below.
One marketing front, many marketing avenues: I don't know many people who get into farming for the marketing side of things. (For me, marketing is the least appealing aspect.) It seems silly to have a dozen different stalls in the market selling roughly the same organic vegetables when one or two people (in one or two shifts) would do the same job just as well (while paying only one set of market fees). That would allow the other ten or eleven people to catch up on odd jobs, run errands, sleep in, get coffee with a friend in town, or do whatever else they would do with a few extra hours.
At the same time, one farmer may be limited in how many methods of marketing they can pursue by time and other constraints. A cooperative could pursue many avenues including the farmer's market, grocery stores, restaurants, a CSA, or even weekly delivery boxes – many more methods than any one person could undertake without running themselves ragged. “Excess” produce could be shifted from one marketing method to another if desired. For example, if too much lettuce was grown to market through a grocery store that could be transferred to a weekly delivery box (where the contents would be partly determined by that week's availability). Or surplus tomatoes could be directed to a cooperative member who makes salsa, to be included in their next batch for market.
Shared equipment: Obviously many farm tools belong to individual farmers, and for good reason. But some larger or infrequently used items and equipment could be owned collectively, or shared (perhaps with some compensation) by one member of the cooperative with the rest. For example, a rototiller may not be used many days a year but can make a major savings in labour and effort.
A bigger and more effective example might be a vehicle or vehicles for bringing produce to market. For instance, a van could collect produce from all of the farms in one area and bring it to market or another site to be sold. Some farmers could conceivably get along fine without even owning a motor vehicle, or without owning a large vehicle. Farmers' market produce could be collected on a Friday evening and brought to a central cold-storage site, and then all of it brought to the market on Saturday morning.
Shared labour, shared skills: We all know that two people can do a job in a day that takes one person more than two days. And that seven people can do a job in a day that would take one person more than a week. By pooling our labour for workbees we can make it possible for jobs to be done and projects completed that would be beyond the abilities of any one member of the cooperative.
Rotating weekly workbees would let us get more work done, share skills and tools, get to know each other, and have fun. They would also be a great opportunity to brainstorm and exchange ideas and techniques for farming.
Diverse sites and backgrounds: Even though we could share some labour, some equipment, and marketing, we would retain the benefits of having numerous smaller farms. We could still do things however we liked at our own farms and gardens. We wouldn't have to “farm by committee.” Depending on how we structured the cooperative, we could be buffered against a drought or disaster at any one site because the other sites would provide a valuable redundancy.
We could also sell more diverse produce more effectively. Since it often doesn't take that much more effort to grow ten beds of corn instead of five, various farms could focus on the crops and varieties they were most interested in that year, and still maintain a savings in labour. Additionally, those of us who wanted to save our own seed could pick a favourite variety (say, of squash) for that year, but still sell many different varieties (of squash) without having to worry about the seed crossing.
Cooperation over competitiveness: If there were twenty small organic growers with similar products at the farmers' market, economics would encourage them to reduce their prices in order to undercut other growers and encourage customers to shop at their stand. This doesn't make a big difference for any given food buyer, but can mean a definite decrease in income for all growers.
Having a cooperative means that prices could be set at more reasonable levels to ensure a living wage for growers. We have a very unique situation: on a national or global scale, farmers can always be undercut by growers with a more economically “efficient” climate or labour situation. Supply management like the Milk Marketing Board's quota system is one way of encouraging a decent price for farmers, but that can impede new farmers from starting up. It also isn't guaranteed to survive if the World Trade Organization or similar organization decides that the quota system is a “barrier to profit.”
However, the world of local organic produce is small enough that we don't have to fall into the trap of trying to undercut each other. We can get the benefits of supply management without the downsides.
An inclusive spectrum of size and access to land: A cooperative doesn't have to be limited to farm-scale operations. Because marketing is undertaken by the cooperative as a group rather than placed on individuals, even very small growers could participate. We could make it possible for even urban or backyard growers to sell their produce through the cooperative, assuming they grew enough of any one thing to make distributing it worth the labour.
Take the salsa-maker example from earlier. That salsa maker wouldn't even need to have a garden or a farm as long as they had access to a kitchen. In fact, there could be many advantages to having people without land in the cooperative. For example, they could potentially take over marketing shifts at very busy times for farmers, add their particular special skills to the cooperative, and they would be another pair of hands at in workbees. By participating those same people could learn skills and work towards getting access to land themselves if they desired. It would also encourage people to grow or participate at a scale that was appropriate for them, rather than at a “normal” or “full” scale.
At the same time, if the cooperative did ever get so large so as to make decision-making and coordination difficult, the cooperative could split into several smaller cooperatives split along ideological, horticultural (i.e., growing practices), or geographical lines.
Promoting organics and ecological food growing practices: Presumably we all agree that the more people are growing organically and ecologically produced food, the better. In a cooperative system we wouldn't need to fear new growers as our “new competition” but could welcome them as potential new partners. With peak oil and other food production crises upon us, I say the more local organic growers the better.
Possible creative opportunities: There are many creative approaches we can come up with if we put our heads together. People who buy organic produce usually want to support other ecological practices as well. How about an effort to put some, most, or all of our farms or gardens off-the-grid? How about bringing produce to market by bicycle? Even further, but still possible several potential farms are located on islands – so how about delivering produce to the downtown market via sailboat? Methods like that wouldn't have to be done all of the time (at least, not yet) but would certainly draw a lot of attention and publicity. And more profoundly, such efforts would demonstrate and help to create truly sustainable food systems.
Where do we go from here? If all this interests you, I encourage you to contact me (and talk to other growers) so that we can start brainstorming and discussing arrangements that might work for us. If we do want to start something this year we'd best get moving fast before the planting and growing season takes off and makes us even more busy.
Whether people are interested in start a cooperative this year or not, it is something we would benefit from discussing soon. A cooperative could be of special benefit during the start-up years for sharing skills and resources when things may be tight. And it makes sense, and would be much easier, to cut to the chase and make a cooperative now rather than forging one together several years in the future out of many different approaches and many disparate marketing strategies.
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