Food Cooperative

Food Cooperatives

Food cooperatives are an easy way for neighbors to connect around a common need without sacrificing a lot of convenience.

Historically food cooperatives have been a central point of interaction in communities. Even with the advent of large stores and wholesale prices cooperatives maintain their popularity by allowing people to hold ownership of the distribution of the food and to insure that no one profits from the endeavor more than necessary.

There are a great deal of resources available outlining the basic steps needed for a food cooperative to function, but these steps are always predicated on finding a number of people in your area who share enough similar tastes to warrant the collective action needed to bring a cooperative into being. During the startup phase, while the group is going and new folks are coming in, it's important to continue to survey for interests and to find the small conveniences that appeal to each person so that the cooperative can be a success.

Food cooperatives can be used as a means for a group of people to engage in collective bargaining with producers. In some cases, for example with produce, it might be possible for the group to arrange relatively low prices with a farmer by cutting out all the intermediaries. In many cases intermediaries are taking the lion's share of the price collected at the checkout counter of your grocery store. Your coop might be able to serve as the sole intermediary, eliminating some of the costs, for sure the profit, and also establishing a connection to your local farm.

Internal Links

• Cooperatives

External Links

• http://interpreters.coop/ Interpreters Cooperative