A recent article in the UK’s Guardian entitled Supermarkets? No thanks, tells us about a current wave of local food-buying cooperatives in the UK.
Having spent most of my adult life working for Catalyst Collective and volunteering in many roles for Radical Routes, I thought I’d post here a little about food co-ops, but also about the role that co-ops could possibly play through peak oil transition and in a post carbon world.
This is a weekly food shop, cooperative style – a model of food distribution where neighbours work together to take control of their local supply chain. The system is simple: find a supplier, buy in bulk and collectively cover the costs. Smaller co-ops will only buy what participants have ordered, whereas larger organisations operate as markets or even set up their own shops. Some of these “community” co-ops invite customers to become members. You pay a nominal fee to be able to shop from it, or have a say in how it is run. Others are more informal and open to all. There are also “workers’” co-ops, which are often much larger organisations, where paid employees share all key business decisions.
The concept, of course, is far from new, but it’s proving increasingly popular. “Interest is definitely growing,” says John Atherton of Co-operatives UK, an organisation that supports cooperative enterprise across Britain. “We’re seeing rising numbers of buying groups and community shops. It’s a trend that is set to continue.”
The motivations are many: fears about food security; food inflation; the power of supermarkets; the bruised image of capitalism; a lost sense of community.
Across Britain, food co-ops are sprouting up in school halls, community centres, farm sheds or even your neighbour’s front room – anywhere, in fact, where rent is free.
“I use the term ‘trust trading’,” says Dan Dempsey, manager of a project establishing food co-ops in Wales. In essence, he says, it’s about a return to traditional routes of trade: reconnecting farmers with communities, and countryside to cities; paying a fair price and avoid markups by middlemen.
This is a great idea, and I have been involved in the formation of several similar food co-ops. Ours started with a meeting of neighbours and friends, where one of us donated a back room (or in one instance their living room!) and we all contributed £10 or so to get our first order with a wholefoods co-operative. That was the motivation for us, in Hull, there were no decent wholefood shops, so we pooled a few quid each, and our labour, registered a worker co-op / compant structure, and ordered from the catalogue. Once a month the delivery would arrive, and a few of us would sort it all into smaller sacks, work out prices – we added 10% so the organisation would accumulate reserves and have its own capital.
There are several ways to run a ‘food co-op’ and several legal structures possible, if you decide to go down the legal structure route. On the most basic level you could do without the formality of a legal structure, and simply buy in bulk collectively and from suppliers that fit your ethics, although most large wholefood wholsale co-ops won’t sell to unregistered groups, as they feel this undermines local wholefood shops.
Or, as we did in Hull, you can register a workers coop, which is a basic company limited by guarantee, similar to many charities ie not-for-profit structures. The difference between a worker co-op company and a normal company is that employees, as defined in the rules, are the members and directors of the company. So there are no seperate shareholders reaping profits from the company purely because they have invested money. Those who do the work own and control the business, so it is effectively turning capitalism on its head. And of course, as you the workers are the owners and govern the activities of the business, you can include whatever rules you would like, regarding the activities of the business, whether it makes a surplus and what happens to it. I know of one coop that donates some of its income and time/skills to support eco-living projects in the area, and I would really like to see more small local coop businesses set up with the intention of supporting non-economic projects in their areas.
Unicorn Grocery , in the Guardian article, is a worker cooperative based in Manchester UK.
But, I think that most of the other groups in that article are food co-ops or consumer co-ops, where the people who buy from the co-op are its members, and get to either make the decisions for the coop at general meetings, or elect a management board to manage the day to day running of the coop. Most consumer coops also give their employees membership and more say in their own employment terms etc than conventional companies. Some of these coops only sell to members, while others are open to the public generally but offer perks to their members or discounts. The biggest consumer coops are The Co-op chain of food stores, CIS (insurance) and CWS (which is one of the biggest farmers in the UK). Many radical co-operators would argue that the Co-op Group have lost their way, and have neglected their membership base in the pursuit of competing with conventional supermarkets, and this may be true, but the Co-op is still better than most shops, and there is a lot of scope for activists to get involved in the Co-op to push it towards more ethical and loca behaviour.
In recent years, several consumer co-ops have been set up to save village post offices and shops, and because the shop is owned by the people who benefit from it, they tend to survive or even succeed where conventional businesses fail.
Another option is community coops, where a need is perceived by a group of people (beyond shops and consumers) and a project is set up, to be owned by the people that use the facilities. Examples of this are London Action Resource Centre:
A collectively run building providing space and resources for people and groups working on self-organised, non-hierarchical projects for radical social change. The resources of the building include meeting-space, library, shared offices, a roofgarden, banner and prop-making space and an action information area. If you’re interested in helping out with LARC, booking a meeting-space, or otherwise using the buildings resources, please contact us at the address above…
And Falmouth Green Centre:
Falmouth Green Centre is a community enterprise promoting sustainability.
Projects at Falmouth Green Centre raise environmental awareness and encourage community participation. They included the waste wood project (now closed) which re-used timber to manufacture wildlife habitat boxes and garden furniture, and a nursery project (still thriving) growing and selling organically grown herbs, wildflowers and native trees.
The grounds of the Falmouth Green centre operate as a community garden and feature a wildlife & woodland area, organic plots and an orchard. Regular practical volunteering activities take place on Mondays. The work of the centre supports social inclusion, providing volunteer opportunities and training for local people including the long-term unemployed, mental health users and people with special needs.
So far, so good. Worker coops, consumer coops, community coops. Each of these structures can be used to set up something useful, local, ethical and to help us build the world we want to see, while educating others about the environmental impact of industrial civilisation and capitalism. In many ways, setting up a co-operative company is using the tools of capitalism to improve life for ordinary people. There is also the option of housing coops, where the tenants are the owners and directors of the organisation. Again, when the tenants of the accommodation get to make the decisions that affect them, life can be so much better for those tenants, and surpluses generated from rents could be used for the planting of trees, the improvement of the accommodation, the building or purchase of more accommodation to house more people in decent & affordable housing, or rents could even be reduced!
So far I have been looking at ‘conventional’ coops and their uses in the normal world as is today. But, as we are seeing peak oil unravel the economic world, and the need for so aspects of society that have been pushed further and further apart via globalisation, I see that co-operatives could play a huge role in relocalising and real democracy. Democracy isn’t achieved through the ballot box, but by who owns and controls the infrastructures of their daily lives.
Co-ops could be set up to collectively own transport. In a local world we won’t all need a vehicle, but our coop could own a van, a jeep, a car and 10 bicycles, all shared by the inhabitants of a village or street. A coop could be set up to buy solar panels or wind turbines to power a village. A coop could own a rotovator or tractor, that members can use when they need to. Or a biodeisel coop, where several growers donate a plot of land to grow sunflowers or maize to turn into deisel to power collectively owned tools.
It is unlimited. In the post carbon localised world we are going to need to share more, and coops could be formed to make the structure of that sharing work more smoothly, with terms and agreements made and formalised. Using consensus decision-making within co-operative structures we can learn who to make it all work, how to share and work together, because we have to.
I see co-ops springing up everywhere, fulfilling every kind of need, with a huge range of structure diversity and uniqueness, where the corporate landscape was one of monoculture, sameness and conformity.
The only limitations are the ones that are stopping the corporate monocultures and our imaginations. In many instances there may be little need of a legal structure, but I would argue that the co-op ‘movement’ has a lot of experience of meeting skills, collective decision making etc, that we can take what we find useful. In a local world every project or co-op will find its own right way, just as with permaculture principles you see what fits rather than forcing a mould to fit all. But co-ops have a history and sometimes it will make no sense to reinvent. While the world still has an economic system co-op legal structures offer much in the way of credibility (being a company strangely means you get taken seriously), limited liability so you dont lose your home if the business fails, clear cut definitions between what is the co-op and what isn’t, ability to pay wages etc. In fact a co-operative company is a legal person, and can do much that a real person can do. It is a ‘person’ that represents you its members, and exists solely for the benfit of you its members, and will do whatever you its members want it to. Basically you can use a coop to improve your life and the world around you, and at this time cooperative projects will be very useful to ease the transition into post peak oil world. I expect many things we take for granted, which are now arranged by govt or big corporation, will cease to function as the oil economy unravels. Small coop alternatives could take over.
Some more ideas, collectively run and owned:
orchards, local shops to sell members produce, farmers markets, power providers, water treatment, housing, healthcare, libraries, seedsaving, oil press…. anything in fact. The future is local and collective.
I do know of one housing co-op which is attached to a worker coop, where the tenants have a basic weekly income from the worker co-op even though not all tenants work for it, all profits from the worker co-op go to pay the mortgages of the housing co-op, tenants who work outside pay all their wages to the co-ops except theuir basic wage the same as the others, the co-op buys all the needs of the tenants who also get a travel allowance and clothes allowance amongst other things, the coop owns several vehicles and tools/workshops for use of the tenants. Basically everything is collectively owned, and all income is pooled, but the co-op takes care of all the members, even covering them all with private health insurance, and individuals receive allowances above their necessities so they have freedom tempered with responsibility to the community. It works.
For more information, CoopsUk registers co-ops, has paid staff to answer your questions, and is a membership organisation itself.
Radical Routes is a network of coops working for social change, and is connected to an investors coop, Rootstock, to raise funds to lend to its member coops.
Catalyst Collective is a coop that helps coops, and offers a far more affordable registration service for housing, worker and community coops.
Catalyst also has instructions on its website of how to register yourself as a co-operative company at Companies House, for the huge sum of £20. These co-op company rules can easily be modified to fulfill whatever other co-op objectives, and the worker coop rules have very wide-ranging objects, to allow the co-op to do whatever the directors/members wish. using the Catalyst models, perhaps modified, you should be able to set up whatever co-op project that is needed in your area.
I don’t know much about co-ops in the USA, but would love to hear from people across the atlantic, with information to share with our readers. I am sure the co-op option could be just as valuable in America. One idea is for people losing their homes to form housing co-ops to buy the homes from the banks to rent back to themselves – but I don’t know enough about US legal structures to know if this is viable, but I do know that there are a lot of co-operatives active in many areas of business in the USA. And there are many rural intentional communities, owned and run on a co-operative basis, many appearing like traditional villages from the outside.
Transition time is now, time to set up local ethical co-ops, to help us take care of ourselves?
