The farm has expanded from the initial long-term dollar lease on 3 acres of good arable land. The VEGGI Farmer’s Cooperative takes care of all that, leaving them free to work the soil, and greenhouse aquaponics system. The language barrier doesn’t allow the farmers to communicate with prospective buyers. Unlike most urban farming cooperatives though, this group has a major problem marketing and selling their produce. It was too sporadic and small-scale to really market, so he created a co-op. One enterprising young man noted that there was a lot of subsistence farming going on in backyards. ( Pirate Farmers) Cultural Farm CooperativesĮvery city has it’s ethnic neighborhoods, and in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, the Vietnamese community again lost a huge portion of their economic capability after the BP’s oil disaster destroyed the fishing industry. Though one of the members has an added-value processing operation, Pickles and Peppers, which turns appropriate crop harvests into fermented and smoked products.īreaking new ground. This group is focused on feeding themselves and their families good food in a food desert. The farmers who work on these 2 farms are paid in portions of the day’s harvest that equate to the number of hours they work. The purpose of this is that if neighborhood market values greatly improve, the farmers are far less vulnerable to developers. It’s actually a community land trust where members share ownership of East Side urban farmland. Anyone in Buffalo who wants to farm can join, but no internships or training is available. This urban farming cooperative cultivates over 10 acres of land in the heart of the city, which is a lot compared to most city farms, but this co-op is different in a number of ways.įirstly, it’s open membership. One day their farmer co-op will provide living wage jobs, and boost Buffalo’s economy.Īnd then we have the Farmer Pirates, who sailed into the tax foreclosure auction with pooled funds, and scarfed up 12 consecutive city lots for a song. They want it to be totally self-sufficient and sustainable, like Chicago’s off-grid project, The Plant. But the goal is transforming an old factory into a source for locally grown organic produce, mushrooms, fish, craft beer, kombucha, and more. At present the startup occupies the basement of a hydroponics shop, where one of the team still works. The team have quickly grown an aquaponic microgreens business that may soon get in the way of their full time off-farm jobs by pooling their skills, knowledge, resources, and spare time. One is a worker-owned sustainable vertical farm, aptly named the GroOperative. Types of Urban Farming Cooperativesīuffalo, New York has two distinctly different urban farming cooperatives. So, its not surprising to see city agriculture ventures adopting their own brand of urban farming cooperatives together. Conventional farms continue to benefit from cooperatives today. Harvest processing cooperatives gave them branding and marketing power too. Collective ownership and pooled resources gave farmers increased buying power for everything from seed and feed to tractors and implements. A group wields more power than one person, and farming cooperatives have been a part of the agricultural community for well over 100 years.
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