Food Co-ops
Dave worked with Claire Smith and others to set up Brimscombe Food Co-op last year. The co-ops now has 10 members and is debating where it should go for supplies. Here are some thoughts from Dave. For a step-by-step guide to setting up a food co-op see this link: http://www.upstart.coop/page36.html
Food co-ops are not just about saving money, as Dave points out
Priorities when thinking about buying food
1. To reduce environmental externalities associated with the production, processing, packaging, storage and transportation of food stuffs. The industrial food chain is very energy and resource intensive and is a major source of CO2 emissions and land degradation. For instance, each calorie of food consumed very typically has an embodied energy content of roughly 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy. For every bushel of corn produced in an industrial context, roughly two bushels of top soil are lost forever. Humans are the only species on earth able to invest 10 times more energy in the creation of a meal than what the actual meal provides. For all other species this would spell extinction. The answer: buy local; buy organic; buy fresh; reduce need for packaging and buy in bulk. Wholefood wholesalers, preferably co-operative ones like Essential http://www.essential-trading.co.uk/ or Suma http://www.suma.co.uk/, can meet some of these needs as can farmers markets and other local producers.
2. To reduce dependence upon supermarkets. These entities rip off farmers, force the cost of food down to an artificially low-level, wipe out small traders in town centres (consider the damage done by Wal-Mart/Asda throughout the United States) and encourage the development of car-dependant, out-of-town shopping complexes. In 2006 the amount of land under organic production fell within the UK. The reason: supermarkets are ripping off organic farmers in the same way they do conventional farmers. The result: they decide that ethics don’t pay and close down. Most of our organic grub is imported and this carries an energy and CO2 penalty. Using an ethical wholesaler, in combination with supporting local food producers, can reduce our need to use supermarkets and contribute to their monopolisation of the global food chain.
3. To remind ourselves that “cheap food” has an external cost. Wholesalers are (generally) cheaper than Supermarkets. If you can find products that are cheaper in the supermarkets, then you can bet that someone, somewhere, will be picking up the tab. Cost should not be a major factor in influencing our decision – a few quid here or there is just not important in the great scheme of things.
4. Remind ourselves that food coops should be fun and innovative. If we can run a food coop successfully then others will imitate and this is how change takes place. We could spark off a whole network of food coops.