Cooperation Works
Cooperation Works. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.
We are all taught at a very young age that cooperation is the best way to get things done. But it does seem that as we get a bit older we slowly decide we can go it alone little knowing that cooperation with others is a very effective tool. Teresa Young, Organizational Development Specialist,
YOUNG: This worker coop training sprung out of the last financial education piece that we did because a little part of that focused on worker coops because they’re a little bit different, the way their finances are and so we had just a little blurb on that and so many people were interested in learning more about that that they decided to put on a whole training that really focused specifically on worker coops.
Young is expecting a broad cross section of people interested in learning how to develop a coop.
YOUNG: I’m hoping to get some people who actually do some sort of economic development or working with different groups that might just want to educate themselves a little bit more on what is a worker coop and how does it work. It seems to me like the small business centers if someone comes in and they have an idea for a coop, a lot of those people in the small business centers know about the different business models but they’re not really familiar with the cooperative business model.
There are many different coop models out there including ag coops and Young says that one is more of an urban ag coop.
YOUNG: It’s not your typical ag coop but there’s this group of urban farmers that’s kind of an interesting new movement where they’re trying to use land within the city to grow vegetables and sell them at CSA’s so it’s more small production, it’s not big production because there’s such a movement for access to locally produced food that people are coming up with these new and unique ideas of how to make that happen.
The training program consists of 4-2hour web based sessions. Young is excited to see what people come up with.
YOUNG: I think people are always coming up with new and innovative ideas of how they might be able to utilize coops so more people think about it other people might come up with other ideas as yea that’s makes sense we should do this together.
For more information on coops and this training program visit www.nwcdc.coop.
That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.
