An Introduction to Worker Cooperatives for Farmers and Start Ups

 

 

On January 30th presenters from the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, The Greenhorns, The National Young Farmers Coalition and cooperative farm practitioners discussed:

  • Examples of how the worker cooperative model is being used to share land and other resources to enable farmers to overcome barriers to entry and share land and labor
  • The basics of worker cooperative start-ups
  • Attendies questions on worker cooperative farm structure, operations, management and governance 

Presenters:

  • Faith Gilbert- author of Cooperative Farming, a SARE-sponsored guidebook on collaborative business models for small and beginning farmers and a co-founder of Letterbox Collective Farm. 
  • Joe Rinehart- Rural Programs Coordinator with the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives and the Democracy at Work Institute
  • Sophie Ackoff- Membership and Development Coordinator, National Young Farmers Coalition
  • Frederic Theriault, Tourne-Sol Cooperative Farm
  • Dylan Zeitlyn, Diggers Mirth Farm
The Power Point for the presentation can be found here, and the prezi presentation can be found here.