Solidarity Food Cooperatives?

J. Howard1

Abstract

Within the production, distribution, and consumption of food there is often a lack of social solidarity. This is true even within the cooperative movement. Here I report on my experience with a multi-stakeholder food cooperative, relating both the possibilities it might offer and the problems that it struggles to address.

Although there are hundreds of retail food coops in Canada and the United States, the majority of them are only consumer cooperatives. In other words, these consumer cooperatives do not have a formalized way of integrating producer concerns or worker concerns into their organization. They lack the substrate wherein solidarity takes root. The following paragraphs explain my involvement in a multi-stakeholder food cooperative--something which I prefer to call a solidarity food cooperative.

I live in Pennsylvania, in neither Pittsburgh nor Philadelphia. The social agenda of many whom I work with varies drastically with my own. What brings us together is a desire for local, healthy and organic food. Initially the adverts for involvement with our food coop centered on a “full-service storefront.” However, that call to action, in an area of 500,000 people, gathered only about 35 members; we were asking from $150 to $250 for a household membership. To make a long story short, we could not gather enough capital for a storefront; we had to change our action plan.

Some Board members left; others continued. We decided to follow in the footsteps of Oklahoma Food Co-op, which has an internet-based distribution system that services much of the state. From what I’ve gathered, this food co-op was started by people who have affinities with the distributist movement. The interesting thing for me is that their cooperative is jointly owned by buyer- members and producer-members. In recent years many communities throughout Canada and the United States have begun using this model as well.2 I have heard of this multi-stakeholder approach elsewhere, albeit not in a food network, but rather as a solidarity cooperative. That being said, this model coalesces well with the solidarity economics movement, as it promotes solidarity between buyers and growers.

J. Howard, “Solidarity Food Cooperatives?” Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action, Volume 4, Number 1, Summer 2010, pp. 151-154.

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We have the opportunity of using the momentum of the local food movement-- what has been labeled the “locavore movement”--to re-introduce and resituate the food cooperative movement. Within Canada and the United States, the cooperative movement often mirrors the capitalist organization of allegiances, i.e., it divides society into groups of buyers and sellers. There exists a long history of producer cooperatives, as well as a long history of consumer cooperatives. However, the line between the two has remained fairly firm; it often appears to be more of a wall.

While Community Supported Agriculture operations (CSAs) have worked somewhat against this trend, they also have their limitations. For example, in the midst of their popularization, they have become less about community farming and more about subscription-based purchasing patterns.3 Farmers often offer pre-defined market baskets rather than actual shares of the year’s vegetable wealth. Also, CSAs often do not have protocols for cooperating with other farms. On the other hand, a solidarity food cooperative provides a mechanism for doing so. Furthermore, by promoting solidarity between local farmers and local buyers solidarity food cooperatives have the potential to facilitate the creation of a comprehensive community-based food system. Granted, this is only a small beginning for an anti-capitalist food network. But I do believe it might be a powerful one as it brings alienated growers and alienated buyers into a shared space wherein anti-capitalist ethics may take root. As long as we are stepping away from practices of alienation, we are stepping in the right direction.

Admittedly, this does not solve some foundational problems.

First, I am not aware of a food coop that involves, in any organized fashion, the three parties that make up a regional distribution system--the consumer, the farmer, and the distributor. At present, the cooperative I am involved in only differentiates between buyer-members and producer-members. The third party that needs integrating into this system is the group of workers who does the distributing. In the Oklahoma Food Co-op model there is only one paid worker, who also happens to be the founder. The other workers are buyer-members who are compensated with minimum-wage credit per hour of volunteering. There are worker-owned and governed food co-ops, such as Rainbow Grocery Cooperative in San Francisco and The Big Carrot in Toronto, Ontario. But it is time we transcended this divide between the retailers (if I may use such a term), the buyers, and the producers without capitulating to hierarchical management schemes.

Secondly, this is still a system that, on the whole, does not take inequality into account. I remember well our initial research into our consumer base for the cooperative in 2008. Funding agencies wanted to see that enough people were around who would buy organic and local food. Their concerns were what

Solidarity Food Cooperatives? 153 clusters of consumers buy such food? Because of the high pricing of such food, this means usually the financially secure. In our area of Pennsylvania, this means mostly white, educated people. Local and organic foods have become niche products for such consumers. They are often more expensive than “conventional” produce, and understandably so, seeing as their production often excludes exploitative practices (but, of course, not always). But whenever people’s lives are governed by low wages, do they have the luxury of paying for egalitarianism or “fair-trade”? I do not feel we have adequately dealt with this issue in the cooperative I work with. In truth, it is not the concern of many I work with. However, I believe, we have made one small step in the right direction. We have been attempting to integrate a member of the Time Bank network into our operations. Unfortunately, we are limited in our ability to accept non-dollar payments as the food coop is still merely a meeting point between members that seek the exchange of commodities. In order to truly make the “time dollars” a viable alternative to monetary transactions, the farmers would need to find a use or reason to accept them. As of yet, they have not been either capable or willing to do so.

So far, we have only been operating as a multi-stakeholder cooperative for less than a year. I do not know where our discussions will lead; nor do I know if all will find this consortium of interests reconcilable. However, the discussion exists--that alone is a triumph.

Despite these obstacles, I hope that solidarity food cooperatives may operate as places where truly anti-capitalist livelihoods may be re-imagined, activated, and sustained. It is certainly not the only way, but it may prove to be useful one. Whatever the case, it is time we reevaluate the relational architecture of collectives involved in food production, distribution and consumption. Where else but around food--that most basic of things--can we begin to build an anti- capitalist network?

J. Howard 154

Endnotes

1 J. Howard is interested in collaboratively building non-capitalist systems of sustenance. He lives in Pennsylvania and can be reached at: [email protected]. 2 Local Food Cooperative. (n.d.). Who’s using it? http://www.localfoodcoop.org/installed_base.php. 3 I owe this insight to a friend of mine, who has been involved with CSAs for years.

J. Howard, “Solidarity Food Cooperatives?” Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action, Volume 4, Number 1, Summer 2010, pp. 151-154

Solidarity Food Cooperatives?