5 Spot: What Makes a Co-op A Co-op?

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By Sarah Quallen, Co-op Volunteer Writer

Since, according to my five-year-old son, the Moscow Food Co-op is my favorite place to go and my favorite thing to do is to go to the Moscow Food Co-op (they’re two different things, I swear), I frequently get asked: What, exactly, is a co-op? Well...

1. A co-op is a business. It sells foods and goods, and it is not a not-for-profit (did you notice that double negative?) So. A co-op is usually incorporated, and does make a profit.

2. But a co-op exists for the benefit of its members, and many co-ops are community driven and support local charitable and social organizations. A good example at the Moscow Food Co-op is “A Dime in Time,” which donates your bag refund money, should you choose to give, to a new organization every month.

3. Co-op owners are co-op members. If you belong to a co-op, then you are an owner who has the right to vote for board members, who then vote on policies and business decisions like hiring management.

4. Unlike business investors who invest to make a profit, people who invest in or begin a co-op do so through a shared need to get services or products they were unable to get elsewhere. And, since members are owners, there are financial rewards as well. At Moscow Food Co-op, members get a 10 percent discount on case purchases and receive discounts on items throughout the store during regularly-scheduled “member days.” At the end of the year members often earn dividends.

5. Most co-ops choose to comply with seven basic principles as a guideline for structure, according to Co-op, Stronger Together’s website. These principles are: voluntary and open membership; democratic member control; economic member participation; autonomy and independence; education, training, and information; cooperation among cooperatives; and concern for community. One can see with ease that the Moscow Food Co-op successfully follows all of these principles.

The next time someone asks me, “What is a co-op?” I can answer them with aplomb! Now, so can you.

Beet Read: Food and the City

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Written By Rachel Caudill, Co-op Good Food Book Club Volunteer Coordinator

 Join us in reading the October Co-op Good Food Book Club book, Food and the City: Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution by Jennifer Cockrall-King. The Book Club will meet Sunday, October 26, from 6:00-7:30 p.m. at a member’s private residence to discuss Food and the City. Email bookclub@moscowfood.coop for more information and directions.

With this month’s newsletter theme being “The Cooperative Issue” what book could be better than one spotlighting urban centers around the world working cooperatively to create thriving and secure local food systems? That’s just what Cockrall-King does with her book Food and the City by taking us from the dismal industrial grocery store situation—and all of its problems—to the local farmers and cooperatives working together to create something truly vibrant, healthy, and secure.

Bill McKibben says, "All over the world I’ve watched urban dwellers begin to figure out that they can start growing food, too. It’s one of the loveliest trends on earth, and Jennifer Cockrall-King does a fine job of capturing its tremendous growth."

As a food writer and avid gardener, Cockrall-King was poised to notice—then document—a massive revolution in our food system that is now well underway. She began seeing more and more food-centric gardens in her neighborhood and community, and then she saw the same thing happening in towns and cities much further afield. It was not an isolated phenomenon.


From the book’s introduction: “Clearly the urban-agriculture movement wasn’t happening in a vacuum. The more I learned about the desperate situation we were in as industrial consumers, the more I grew to appreciate how revolutionary, subversive, and necessary the open-source, chaotic, decentralized nature of the urban-agriculture revolution seemed. If the pundits’ predictions of a catastrophic failure of a century-long experiment in an industrialized, and more recently, globalized food system ever came to pass, community gardens, urban chickens, public orchards, urban beekeeping, commercial urban farms, open sharing of knowledge, and even the science fiction-like promise of vertical farms were poised to coalesce into a new urban food revolution. A shorter food chain...was the future.”

Cooperation, and in this case food cooperatives, are and will be instrumental in this thrilling and epic shift. As Barry Estabrook, author of Tomatoland, writes, "Cockrall-King makes a compelling and inspiring case that small-scale, urban farming may be the key to fixing our broken industrialized food system." Come find out how!

Please join us to discuss Food and the City: Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution (Prometheus Books, 2012) by Jennifer Cockrall-King on Sunday, October 26, from 6:00-7:30 p.m. Remember to email bookclub@moscowfood.coop for the meeting location and directions and/or to receive email reminders about the Good Food Book Club. Food and the City by Jennifer Cockrall-King is available through your local library. If you are interested in buying the book, check out the area’s local used bookstores or visit BookPeople of Moscow where Book Club members receive a discount. For more information about the Good Food Book Club, check out the Outreach section of the Co-op website at www.moscowfood.coop.