Cooperatives

Recognising the value of our local food outlets and forming cooperatives to ensure their continuation seems such an obvious thing to do. The following article was written by my friend Pete and posted on www.ooooby.org Pete's in the UK at the moment and we spoke this morning via Skype. While our worlds seem far apart, the story he told of this community initiative resonated with me, and is one worth re-telling again and again.

There is no reason to let our towns lose their vibrancy and diversity through the influence of big box stores and the globalised, centralised food system. We can and are organising to ensure the local systems, which can more readily adapt and evolve to the changing circumstances. Local and small scale has so many advantages in our fast changing world, and here's one success story of a group of people cooperating to ensure their local greengrocer didn't close its doors. Without their effort, other businesses would have quickly followed suit, but instead they have shown what can be done when people organise.

In a recent article in the “New York Review of Books” Bill McKibben wrote: “The technology we need most badly is the technology of community – the knowledge about how to cooperate to get things done. Our sense of community is in disrepair  at least in part because the prosperity that flowed from cheap fossil fuel has allowed us all to become extremely individualized, even hyperindividualized."

It's time to learn the skills and develop the technology of community. Over to you Pete...

» Read more