On how cooperative businesses could change the world.

On how cooperative businesses could change the world. For some readers this letter will be cut short by your email provider! Please follow this link to the website where you will be able to read without interruption. It’s also pretty ☺️ Thank you! We stand up for all together How co-operatives change society SAFAR FIERTZE JAN 30 READ IN APP One day, while walking down the supermarket aisle of tinned and dried legumes and grains, I noticed a brand labelled organic for just a few pennies more than the supermarket brand. On a closer look at the packaging, below the simple logo the brand claimed to be a local “co-operative since 1977”. Being a single parent, I still couldn’t afford to buy from independent whole food stores, but these tins and packaging looked a cheap-enough, healthy and ethical option. The packaging was transparent, saying exactly from where the food was sourced. The Fiertzeside is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Upgrade to paid The brand became a favourite at home. We had progressively shifted to a vegetarian diet after my tweenagers witnessed how it was that a once live fish ends up on your plate. However, it wasn’t until a few years later that I took an interest in the company itself and learned a little more about how it operates. My son had finished school and had some time to kill before university semester, so I became as proactive as he in finding him a source of income. By chance, I happened upon the jobs page of Suma, the cooperative company three hearty appetites supported. At the time they were looking for highly motivated, physically fit workers for their warehouse. The pay was the motivating factor for my son, which included a daily meal. The recruitment process, even for temporary workers, includes looking for people who would be invested in the future of the business. My son, didn’t get the job - he was more invested in thinking deep thoughts than playing tetras with heavy goods. Suma operates with a clear managerial and ethical structure. They recruit those with the potential to become co-owners in the business, permanent workers being recruited from fixed-term employees. There is no hierarchical structure of management, big decisions are made cooperatively. A workers’ co-op is a radical business that is owned and run by workers. So we don’t have a CEO, we don’t have a big high up boss with a big car, a designated parking space, all that kind of thing. We don’t have shareholders who are making money off our work. We are the ones who profit from our work. We work together; we run the business together, and we stand up for all together, really." Beau, Suma member ¹ Suma grew from a founding membership of 7 workers to 260. Imagine two hundred and sixty workers all getting the same pay, no matter what job they do, making decisions about the future of the business together, learning how to manage other aspects of the business different to where they may have started, and having no boss. Socialised as we are, it won’t always be easy, but the social, educative and economic rewards for thinking about a different way to be are huge. Not far from Suma, is a bakery. I visited in 2012 when it had been up and running for three years. I walked from the privately-owned permaculture and events centre, Edibles, in Slaithwaite (pron. as Slough (rhyming with plough) - ut), where I undertook a permaculture certificate course. The walk is a quiet canal-side footpath and the site where I first sighted a merlin, perched on a rock by the water, seemingly alert and attentive, but unbothered by my presence. The occasional flash of blue advertised kingfisher activity. The path gets a lot of foot-fall and passes The Handmade Bakery which you smell long before you see it. I stopped to grab a coffee and a pastry in its café. On the other side of the counter, dough was being stretched and shaped into loaves and rolls. The original owner came out to chat about his vision for the business and how it is structured. Mostly he complained about getting up at two in the morning to put the ovens on. Like Suma, it is no ordinary business. It is also managed cooperatively, but would never have commenced operation if it wasn’t for the purchase of bread bonds, a small loan offered by potential customers, to be paid back in bread deliveries (including doughy interest). Cooperative members in this model are consumers. The bakery now boasts having paid back all of its bread bond holders, and was the first in the UK to operate with this community-supported model.² Sweden has a long history of cooperatives of the bakery type. Members are consumers who purchase at low prices. They keep their receipts and at the end of the year receive a 3% refund in the form of shares in the cooperative and automatically become members with a vote. They operate with the Rochdale principles of: one member, one vote; cash trading; no outside financing; maximum 5% interest on members’ shares (they are paid in cash after a minimum number of shares has been reached); trading surpluses are refunded to members or used to build a reserve fund; political and religious neutrality; and economic and social education.³ Co-operative principles operating on the scale they do in Sweden contributes to the political education of its citizenship beyond the education courses more formally offered, establishing a healthier national democracy - helping to democratise the state from within.⁴ A more recent development is the rise of co-operatively run social services and they have also acted to confront monopoly pricing from business cartels. Independent banks are now so profitable they pay higher interest rates on deposits than ordinary banks do.⁵ Those banks provide financing for newly-established co-operatives, and a buffer for ailing businesses. The Swedish cooperative movement has been described as a: … progressive, creative, and stabilising element in Swedish economic life. Its noteworthy measures against regimented economy and other forms of economic bondage, have placed it in the front rank of the guardian of liberty.⁶ The Suma -co-operative is very clear about its democratic and social values and it is those values which help to sustain consumer interest and commitment from the membership. It is a social mission as much as an effective business model. Over the course of its 40+ years, it has established cooperative partnerships with small suppliers, building a supply chain of ethical practice which if extended nationally could be society-changing in a way that Sweden’s model has been. It’s an ethos that encourages us to think less about what we can get for ourselves and more about we can achieve if we join together.⁷ For so long I went about my daily life, unaware of the radical, societal changing activity on my own doorstep. While I became increasingly fretful about the glaringly obvious social and environmental decline, behind the scenes seeds of hope were being planted. There is a different way to be. Embers I am endlessly fascinated by ravens, and a pair have made the outskirts of our village their home. I have a crick in my neck from watching them. When visiting the Tower of London, I almost decided not to do the tour to be able to spend more time observing its ravens. You can imagine my excitement, then, when I spotted ravenmaster, Ravenology Christopher Skaife’s self-introduction in Notes. No post to share yet, but watch this space. 1 Suma members are both workers and co-owners of the business. Not all workers are members, but membership is added to from the fixed-term worker pool. 2 https://thehandmadebakery.coop 3 Swedish Co-operatives by James Edward Gillespie of Pennsylvania State College 4 Co-operatives and Democracy in Scandinavia: The case of Sweden by Victor Pesto of Ersta Skönda Bräcke University College. 5 see note 3 6 Thorsten Odhe, cited in Swedish Co-operatives (see note 3) 7 Amrit, Suma Member, quoted in Forty years and counting … the story of Suma, UK Co-ops. The Fiertzeside will be always available to read without any paywalled restrictions. However, financial gifts are greatly appreciated. Paid subscriptions will help me to support other writers and to further the development of a forest garden project which I hope to open as a demonstration site in the future.] © 2024 Safar Fiertze

Making money stick Lessons from the Brixton Pound SAFAR FIERTZE JAN 23

How do you make money stick? This week we take a peek into inner city life and what we can learn from its local economy. For some readers this letter will be cut short by your email provider! Please follow this link to the website where you will be able to read without interruption. It’s also pretty ☺️ Thank you! I emerge from the Brixton Underground station just as the sun is setting. My senses are assaulted by dank city pollution, the drone of traffic dotted with red buses, and the garish signage of a Pound Shop. The road, flanked on both sides by chain stores, extends further than I am able to see. It wasn’t quite what I’d expected. My friend had given a different picture of life in Brixton. She’s not expecting me for another hour and although she’s making us dinner, I know that whatever time she says it’ll be served, it’ll be three hours later. By then, we invariably will have drunk a bottle of wine between us. Experience tells my hungry body to get myself a snack. I shun a Café Nero in the hope of finding an independent shop. Already my nervous system is rejecting the sudden sensory overload; I turn the corner in the hope of a semblance of tranquility in the chaos. The road is equally busy, but the chain stores give way to independent businesses. I’m about to go into a café, but hesitate when I realise it’s no ordinary coffee shop. A group of people tumble out into the cooler night, followed by a member of staff who ushers me in. “Don’t mind the prices on the sign, we close in half an hour, but we’ve still got coffee going, as much as you can drink, and if you need a workstation, plug in.” “Do you have anything to eat?” “Light snacks, sarnies, panini…” I agree to stay. It’s warm, it’s friendly and it’s not a Starbucks. I hang my coat on the back of a chair, sit down and plug in my laptop. As I wait for it boot up I peruse the menu and their information. The café is called Caya and has only recently opened. It provides individual and group workstations, providing “an office without the politics, a kitchen table without the procrastination”. It’s owned and run by a cooperative and for £9 for a morning or afternoon (or £16 for the whole day), you get all the coffee you can drink while working. Food is extra, but cheaply priced for a London venue. I sip on good coffee while I google how far my friend’s home is from where I am, trying to decide whether to walk or taxi the last part of the journey. When the staff member comes back with my panini he offers to call a taxi should I need one. The service they link to is community owned - it operates like a carpool and is a way of getting local people around the city village more conveniently and cheaply. I had planned to walk off the effect of sitting on a train for the last few hours, but am curious. This is more like the Brixton my friend had told me about. Brixton is a transition town and eight years earlier had set up its own currency, the Brixton pound, worth the same as a British pound. Its mantra was “money that sticks to Brixton”. They want to preserve the area's unique identity, foster community spirit, strengthen local bonds, and defend local businesses from the onslaught of chain stores by paying for goods and services with the local money. They also want to cut down on food miles and would like their traders to source goods locally.¹ Caya is one of those operations which makes use of local produce in the lunches it offers. The Brixton pound was ailing even a short while after its launch. The notes were difficult to bank, few people used them, and buying local was more problematic than conceived. Inner-city London isn’t rural Totnes, Lewes or Stroud, which also have their own currencies, but where most goods could be sourced from the local area. How do you offer locally-produced coffee? While the Totnes currency stabilised and enjoyed longevity, one researcher stated he’d be reluctant to recommend a repeat of the Totnes trial. However, he wasn’t against the concept of local currencies per se, just the paper-notes version. Shortly after the launch of the Brixton pound, the first international study into the ‘new economics’, i.e. grassroots currencies, was underway, with a view to learning about their role in more sustainable economies. These took the form of mutual exchange, service credit, local currency and barter economies. In 2012, half were growing, but more than a quarter were in decline. The highest growth rates were in North America and Europe. They were all used in the context of sustainable development, though their aims differ. For example, in South America, the vision was empowerment and social justice, in Europe and America, to reduce food miles, support local business and build social networks. Some were more technologically advanced and others worked with existing political structures to widen participation.² While local notes, are symbolic and help organise a town around a common identity (Brixton notes feature the portraits of historic local residents such as Vincent Van Gogh), digital currencies have more scope. Brixton never gave up on its pound. It instead established a digital platform to work across the mobile phone network and in 2021 it planned to: “… reinvent the Brixton Pound, layering all we have learned in the last decade onto Algorand’s unique blockchain. Open source, trustless³ and inclusive, it’s an ecosystem developed solely to deliver public good.”⁴ Up until then, Brixton boasted a micro-grant scheme, a local lottery and funded a pay-as-you-feel/can surplus food café. As to how the new version of the currency will fair is now a matter of wait-and-see. One problem facing researchers is lack of hard evidence to make good recommendations for grassroots currencies in the future, recommendations that show the exact features which would enable a local currency to work in the longer term. As they arise out of informal networks, more formal track and trace systems rarely operate. However, in one town, they questioned how feasible it was to create an entirely self-sufficient town with some practical data behind the answer. A couple of years after Incredible Edible was established in Todmordon, the local food economy was investigated through a single product - eggs. The average person in Todmorden eats 3 eggs a week. With a population of 15,000, the local demand for eggs is approximately 45,000 eggs a week. That’s a lot of eggs. How do you ensure local production meets that demand? In Todmorden, a campaign was launched - Every Egg Matters, which began first with a survey, and then with an egg map of homes, small-holdings, farms and shops selling local eggs. The map showed they were meeting one sixth of the local demand for eggs. They also established a support network for those keeping or wanting to keep chickens. This included two local schools. Most eggs were available at small production sites - the farm gate. To meet local demand, they’d need to scale up and get eggs onto the aisles of local supermarket chain stores. They reasoned it was entirely possible with a mobile co-operative of five producers with about 150 hens each. To get the model implemented, however, would mean paying more for your eggs than supermarkets generally offer them for. If you are a large commercial operation, then subsidies help to keep the price down. If the same support was given to smaller, ethical producers, both the consumer and the farmer would benefit. And ethically produced eggs do not have to be more expensive. A few years ago, I read a blog about an organic farmer in the US who keeps chickens (both for meat and eggs). She calculated her own eggonomy by conducting a cost analysis of chickens raised conventionally compared to outdoor-reared chickens. Even taking loss of chickens to predators into account (a 5% higher rate of loss when free-range), it was less costly to keep free-range than conventional chickens, as she saved on the expense of feed and energy costs. The added advantages, such as less stressed chickens, garden pest control, and manure, a decrease in overall farming costs, and the result of a higher quality product to take to market. If it is feasible for town with a population of 15,000 to become self-sufficient in eggs, then what other product demands could it supply? I leave Caya Café, and take advantage of more local business recommendations to purchase a bottle of wine and a gift to bring my friend. I arrive, not in a black cab, but a community-owned car. Dinner was late - as usual. Up Next Next week, we’ll take a peek into a cooperative business as a way of thinking about a different way to be. Embers A while back, I asked if any of The Fiertzeside posts impacted on your behaviour in any way. Feedback showed that some posts had helped, in many ways, to clarify on-going thoughts which manifested in some small action. This week, I was delighted to see The Fiertzeside got a mention. Joyce Wycoff loves Mexico, so had a particular interest in my (clarion) post about the revival of chinampas for farming in Mexico City. She’s hoping to visit, and I’m hoping we get to hear about what she learns. In the post she shares a beautiful painting of Maria Féliz. If the name is unfamiliar, Joyce provides enlightening insight. I also empathise with her experience of learning to speak a different language. Thank you, Joyce! gratitude mojo community Love Letter to My Life #67: My new writer's screwdriver On this, my monthly death day, when I write a love letter to my life and acknowledge its ever-changing beauty and eventual end, I’ve decided to indulge myself in two ways … by recommending a post that struck a clarion tone with me (and making it a growing list by adding to it each month) and posting a piece of my dig… Read more 6 days ago · 14 likes · 16 comments · Joyce Wycoff 1 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/sep/21/brixton-pound-local-currency 2 https://grassrootsinnovations.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/seyfang-and-longhurst-2012-money-money-money.pdf 3 For more on what trustless means in the context of crypto currencies see: https://www.techopedia.com/definition/trustless 4 https://brixtonpound.org The Fiertzeside will be always available to read without any paywalled restrictions. However, financial gifts are greatly appreciated. Paid subscriptions will help me to support other writers and to further the development of a forest garden project which I hope to open as a demonstration site in the future. Upgrade to paid SHARE LIKE COMMENT RESTACK © 2024 Safar Fiertze