Investing in Local Food Through Cooperatives
Updated: December 2, 2009
Event Profile
Investing in Local Food Through Cooperatives is an event put on by the Canadian Centre for Community Renewal. This event addresses the constant challenges that anyone working on supporting the development of local food systems these days is running up against – the lack of infrastructure to support local food production, processing and distribution.
This event will explore two cooperative models and draw inspiration on to how local food infrastructure can be financed by local investment. The first case study is from close to home: The Westlock Grain Terminals is a successful New Generation Co-operative located in Westlock, Alberta. In 2002, when the community found out their grain terminal was going to be sold, they rallied together to raise more than $1.2 million in community investment in a 6 week period to purchase the terminal as a community owned venture. Since then, the Co-op has paid healthy dividends on its shares to its members and investors every year since inception, even throughout the recent economic downturn, and are following through on plans to continually expand their grain handling capacity.
The second case study is from afar: Seikatsu Consumer Cooperatives had its humble beginnings in a group of Japanese women around kitchen tables. Now, with over 300,000 members, it provides a clear example of how an ethic of conscious consumerism can be directed towards re-capacitating local food infrastructure.
Event Theme: How local food infrastructure can be financed by local investment
(As provided through event details)
Event Topics: Local food, community revilatization, investment, local food production, economic assets, green energy development
Speaker Name and Categorization
Speaker’s names are linked to their Speaker Event Bios. Many of these speakers address more than one topic: categorization for our purpose is by the most prominent categorization for this particular event only.
Other Details
Event Topic(s)
- Workplace
Topics categorized under “Workplace” are connected to ideas about the physical and mental working environment created by a company, and the impact on employees.