Co-ops: You Are What You Eat
JULY 23, 2007 - On the edge of historic Yellowstone National Park, Bozeman, Montana is a prosperous looking town, with chic cafes and upscale Western furnishing shops. But the most noticeable feature on the length of its Main Street? The Community Food Co-op, a shiny two-story building that stands boldly across the street from the Safeway supermarket.
For once, it’s not a case of the big guy coming in to crush the little guy. It’s the little guy striding into town, guns drawn, ready for a showdown. Even just after eight on a weekday morning, the store is busy, the upstairs cafe lively with folk slurping fruit smoothies featuring local honey instead of sugar. The architecture is soaring prairie wood-beam and steel, mixing the best of both barn and modern loft styles.
While one could have hoped to see more local produce, they are dealing with the limitations of a dry sagebrush and grasslands climate; and they are to be commended for some of the most clear local-food labelling I’ve seen, with a gold star indicating it came from within 300 miles. While other vegetable origin labelling was a little more ambiguous, there were organic signs aplenty. And the meat? In proud tribute to its rangeland origins, every piece of meat is labelled not only with the town it came from, but the farm.
The Co-op began in a small house in 1979, and today has annual sales of $10 million, with growth of 20 percent each year. The big corporations can be jealous of that kind of number. And the staff? Happy as clams. “Are you a member of the co-op?” asks the clerk. Unfortunately, no, but we love the store, I answer. “So do we,” she says.”We’re really proud of it.” Would you ever hear such words from the mouth of an employee at a regular shop?
Co-operatives are owned by members and operate democratically–these are the most basic principles. On the ground, they can take very different forms: from sleek corporate-style machines to inefficient sessions of infighting amongst dreadlocked hippies. Luckily, the latter is very rare.
On the business side, they offer a more ethical buying model, because they operate according to the desire of members, who are generally humane, rather than the abstract principal of Profit. In fact, their legal structure doesn’t allow them to retain profit: they either use it to expand, or return benefits to members.
Co-ops bring in $1 trillion annually, and if they were a country they’d be number 10 in the world in terms of income. Canada is in the top 10 of the “Global 300” ranking of co-operatives, while the U.S. is number 1 or 3 depending on the qualifier.
Many co-ops are food and farming related. In fact, the world’s top co-op is Zen-Noh of Japan, with $53 billion in annual revenue. They do everything from purchase supplies for farmers to operate retail markets.
Unfortuntely, I can see from this list that some of the top agriculture co-ops use a conservative model, with the United Farmers of Alberta focussing on prices and profits received by members rather than ethical concerns, such as opposing pesticide use or genetically modified grain. (They also own a chain of gas-stations.) That said, they still have more community spirit than your typical corporation. They care about the life of small towns.
The bank I belong to is a co-op, and while it has a corporate sheen that is reassuring, as it has grown rapidly in the last decade I dare say it is the most significant philanthropic group in the entire province. Creating bike greenways across the city, re-building wetlands, supporting water conservation initiatives and environmental groups generally, this little-bank-that-could likely does more good now than the government. (Though perhaps that is not hard to do.)
Anyone can start a co-op, and most start small–like Vancouver’s famous Mountain Equipment Co-op, a national outdoor-goods chain that began with a handful of climbers in the 1970s who banded together to buy cheaper, good-quality gear. So why not start your own food co-op? Then you too can buy exquisitely labelled steak, as do the good people of Bozeman, Montana. Then, you can eat your profits, rather than the profits eating you. -ADS
