Alternatives to Conventional Shopping
Part 3 in the Just Food System Series by Dana Geffner
In part 1 and part 2 of this series, I discussed conventional vs. regenerative business structures and alternative business models that are building fair and equitable partnerships with organizing efforts around the globe as part of Pathways to Creating a Just Food System. In this part, I share examples of people and communities around the globe that have developed different types of structures and organizing efforts to offer consumers a way to shop that does not extract wealth out of communities. Here are a few examples of community-owned grocery stores, national organizing associations, and models that place farmers in the driver’s seat.
Cooperatively-owned grocery stores: benefiting consumers, producers, and workers
How do cooperatively-owned grocery stores differ from conventional grocery stores? Conventional grocery stores are owned by shareholders whose core mission is to maximize profits. Consolidation happens all too often, such as the most recent Kroger-Albertson merger, in which over 5,000 stores and 710,000 employees would be impacted, not to mention the elimination of competition, creating higher prices for consumers and reducing wages for workers. Errol Schweizer, the 25-year grocery industry expert and journalist, states, “...the result of a successful merger would mean the top 3 grocers could account for over 50% of all grocery sales, further reducing choices for workers, consumers, and suppliers.” The merger has not gone through yet, and the FTC has filed a lawsuit to stop it from happening, stating, “The largest supermarket merger in U.S. history will eliminate competition and raise grocery prices for millions of Americans while harming tens of thousands of workers.”
Cooperatively-owned food stores are driven by a different mission than conventional profit-driven grocery stores. Their mission is to serve their community members, including local producers, by providing healthy, sustainable food. They are owned and democratically governed by their community-members. Members organize to pool resources they may not have access to on their own and they serve on the board. Cooperative food stores provide education and training on various topics. I have given many talks over the years on fair trade, certifications, and food justice that anyone from the community could attend. Cooperatives also prioritize working with other cooperatives for their sourcing and services.
There are several wonderful examples of cooperative grocers in cities around the U.S.. Only a very tiny sample is included here. These community-driven cooperatives do much more than I mention here, so please visit them in person or online to learn more.
PCC Community Markets started in 1953 in Seattle, Washington. It started as a food-buying club to provide buying power and reduce the cost of food for 15 families in Seattle. Then, in 1961, they transitioned to a consumer cooperative where members paid dues and opened their first storefront in 1967, supported by 340 members. Today, they are a local chain throughout Washington State with 15 retail locations. “Unlike other grocery stores, we send our profits directly back to our members, our stores, and the communities we serve. We don’t use private equity, venture capital, or the stock market to fund our business which allows us to remain committed to a triple bottom line: the economic, social, and environmental responsibilities that shape our co-op from the ground up.”
Park Slope Food Coop is located in Brooklyn, New York, and while its membership is open to all, it only allows members to shop at the coop. They started in 1973 and have about 15,000 members, with a sales turnover of $800,000 in a typical week. They are a member-labor-required cooperative grocery store that requires members to work shifts of 2 hours 45 minutes every six weeks to stay in good standing, with some exemptions for health conditions, caring for someone with serious health conditions, and new parents after birth or adoption. They also work with mainly local producers from 100-500 miles away, depending on the season. Beyond all of this, they also started a Fund for New Food Coops in 2012 to help support the expansion of new member-labor-grocery cooperatives because they believe their model has the power to shape food systems to work for all of us.
Seward Community Co-op is a community-owned consumer co-op that started in 1972 when the civil rights movement was gaining traction in the United States, and food prices were reaching all-time highs. It was originally run by a group of community volunteers who were committed to building a better world by participating in grassroots organizing. Today, they have two locations serving 23,000 households in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Their 2nd location was opened in a mixed-income community of color, and they needed to work hard to earn the trust of the community. For Seward Co-op to be accepted into the community, the store needed to be part of the community makeup. Through intensive work, they were able to create diversity goals for store hiring and focused on making healthy food accessible through different programs such as Nourish, a program that allows anyone on SNAP, WIC, or other government assistance programs to become a member-owner for 20% of the full membership fee plus an additional 10% discount on every purchase. Further, the commitment to racial equity and changing power dynamics was cemented when the members elected five people of color of the nine to serve on the board of directors.
I encourage you to become a member of your local co-op, serve on the board, and/or, if you are traveling, visit one (if they allow you) in order to dive deeper into the community you are visiting.
France: business organizes with farmers to change power dynamics
In 2024, I walked part of the Camino Frances in Spain. This is a famous catholic religious pilgrimage. For me (I’m not catholic) and for over 50% of the people who do this walk, it is more of a spiritual pilgrimage that provides time and space to ponder where we are in life. I had left my executive director position at Fair World Project and desperately needed time to reflect on my work over the past 25 years in the fair trade and food justice space. I wanted to work through the negativity that had infiltrated my mind that individuals could not make a difference with their purchases, that changing policy was impossible because of how money governed politics, and that the power would always live in the hands of just a few. I was stuck in a negative loop.
On my first day, I met Camille. She owned an organic grocery store in Burgundy, France, that is a member of Biocoop, a cooperative association made up of 3300 French organic farmers organized into 20 cooperatives organized by products and 750 retail stores throughout the country. Camille had an unwavering passion for her work as we discussed the topics of organic and fair trade certification and industrial agriculture. Upon finishing my walk, I decided I wanted more information about Biocoop, so I got on a video call with Camille to learn more.
The Biocoop cooperative started in the 1970s as consumers and retailers wanted to stop the rise of intensive conventional farming. They started to organize to go against the influx and, in 1985, formalized bylaws and requirements for the cooperative. Today, member requirements include a 100% commitment to no GMOs and organic and fair practices for all products. Retail stores are committed to moving 50% of the products into bulk bins by 2025, and all members are to have 5:1 salary caps. Biocoop has four warehouses throughout France that distribute to retailers. Each member store can carry whatever it wants as long as it fits the standards held by Biocoop requirements, which include organic, fair, local, and privately held businesses not backed by venture capitalist money—no publicly traded companies. In the United States it is hard to imagine filling the shelves with enough products since so many brands end up consolidated by larger brands or sell out to venture capitalists. I asked Camille if it was difficult to find enough products to fill her shelves that were not big brands or backed with VC money. She stated that it was not for local products but for products such as orange juice and milk it is more difficult, and they work hard to prioritize brands where the producers are the owners. Sometimes Biocoop invests in the brand to make sure it stays small and does not sell out. Further, if a brand sells to a large conventional retailer, Biocoop pulls the product immediately from inventory and the individual stores discount the merchandise they already have and inform their customers.
Camille tells me that, for 15% of her merchandise, she works with local small-scale organic and fair trade farmers in her region who are non-members but fill the Biocoop requirements. 85% of the merchandise is from farmer members or products the Biocoop has secured and stored in her local warehouse. Camille adamantly states, “Local agriculture is as important as the farmers in our cooperative, so we try to put them on the same level to ensure that everyone survives in this world.” The stores and the cooperative are all for-profit entities with bylaws in place to limit certain exploitative business activities. She tells me that she pays 2.5% of her sales annually to Biocoop, with profits mostly reinvested into the cooperative structure. However, as 2023 was a very rough year for the farmer members, the coop members voted to give back 1000 euros in cash per farmer member for a total of 3.3 million euros, “a lot for these small retailers,” Camille mentions. If there is anything left over, it goes back to the shareholders.
Coming from the United States, I envisioned a small natural product store, with limited choices, however this could not have been further from the truth. What I saw through my computer screen as Camille walked me around her store was a huge, stunningly beautiful supermarket, with vast quantities of meats and cheeses, abundant produce, shelf-stable products in all categories, dairy and paper products. This 6500 square foot store showcased over 6000 products. A store where one could easily check off entire shopping lists. However, Camille tells me research from about 5 years ago showed that only 3% of her customers shopped for every item on their list, 97% went elsewhere.
All of a sudden I was inspired again, Camille’s passion was intoxicating and it was bringing back memories of when I felt that excited about participating in transformation, once upon a time. This conversation gave me a fresh outlook on organizing efforts and the role each individual has in creating a more just food system that works for all of us, as long as we work together.
Farm stops: a new alternative to farmers markets
After retirement, a couple in Michigan decided they wanted to help transform food systems. In 2014, they created the Argus Farm Stop, which currently has three locations in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They are working with over 200 local farmers and producers to stock their shelves. They are implementing a fully transparent model that allows farmers to have a marketplace and take most of the retail sales percentage. In conventional grocery stores, cooperative grocery stores, and independent grocery stores, farmers generally receive roughly 15% of the retail price for their produce. At Argus, they receive 70% of the retail price. There are certain guidelines agreed upon between the farm stop and the farmers, such as producers owning their own products and setting the retail price. Knowing they will retain 70% of that price, they provide sufficient supply and make regular deliveries, advise staff how to best care for their products on the shelves, and be responsible for their own produce in each location, which means visiting regularly to turn their produce.
At Argus, they also offer weekly produce, meat, and flower boxes that can be picked up. The items are hand-chosen by the staff who have been educated by the very farmers who own the products. The founders of Argus Farm Stop state that in the ten years they have been in business, $21 million has been paid to 250 local producers. What Argus Farm Stops are doing is providing a space every day of the week with labor to staff it so farmers can focus on their own farms.
This is the next evolution to farmers markets, which I love to visit in every city across the globe; witnessing fresh and seasonal fruits, vegetables, and flowers is my favorite pastime, the way I connect to local farmers everywhere. But I am also aware of how difficult the work is for farmers to tend their land, run their business and set up farmers market stands that move from location to location. One has to question the viability of all of this for small family farmers. Chris Newman, entrepreneur and farmer, calculated the operating budget of the farmers markets he sells at and questioning the economics of it, he writes, “[Farmers Market’s]...annual operating budget could comfortably lease, service and staff a large urban brick-and-mortar market that’s open 12 hours a day, seven days a week, year-around.”
In 2023, the owners of Argus Farm Stop were so overwhelmed with the number of inquiries from people wanting information on forming their own farm stop in their own communities that they created a conference to educate the masses on their model. The conference was sold out, proving interest is high in reshaping our food system so that it works locally and for everyone. The idea that farmers can receive more of the retail price of their product is a great piece of the puzzle to transform food systems. We will have to see if this model is economically viable and replicable everywhere. In the meantime, visit your local farmers market to connect and learn how food is grown.
Next up is the final part of the series. Part 4 will include ideas on what individuals can do to participate in transforming food systems. We each have a role to play in making this happen, so I’ll provide some thoughts on how we can support the work I’ve been discussing. I’ll go much deeper into everything I’ve discussed in my upcoming book on celebrating grassroots organizing to transform food systems. If you are interested in keeping up to date on its publication date, please visit my website and sign up to stay in touch.
For over two decades, Dana Geffner has worked to raise awareness of a just food system that works in solidarity with small-scale farmers and artisans, protects worker’s rights and encourages trade policy transformation that benefits people and the planet. She is co-founder of Fair World Project (FWP), an NGO based in the United States that advocates fair trade for organized small-scale farmers and labor justice for workers globally. She was the host of For A Better World, a podcast about fair trade and the farmer and worker-led movements that are fighting for equitable food and farming systems, and editor of the magazine with the same name for over 10 years. She helped to develop the Regenerative Organic Certification to help strengthen the social fairness pillar of the standard and served on the board of directors for 6 years of the Regenerative Organic Alliance. She is a co-founder and current board member of Grow Ahead, a crowdfunding platform that raises funds for farmer-led agroforestry projects to address the challenges of climate change in global south communities. She holds a Master’s in Public Affairs from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master’s Certification in Food Systems from the Berkeley Food Institute. She is now working on a book that will be published by Chelsea Green at the end of 2024 that shares tools for creating more justice in food supply chains to create a more hopeful future for us all. Her goal is to stop corporate extractive growth that is driving inequality and to participate in building a just economy for everyone.
¹ Company Pay Ratios. https://aflcio.org/paywatch/company-pay-ratios
² Company Pay Ratios. https://aflcio.org/paywatch/company-pay-ratios