Cooperative Development Institute: Northeast Center for Cooperative Business

The DFTA Workshop, "Domestic Fair Trade Association: A Movement Based Approach to Fair Trade," is scheduled for Friday morning, June 25th, at 10 a.m. in Cobo Hall Room 02-33. The panelists will include Rosalinda Guillen of Community to Community Development; Joaquin, a young farmworker traveling with Community to Community; Elizabeth Henderson, farmer and NOFA representative; Richard Mandelbaum of CATA-the Farmworker Support Committee; and myself.

Cooperative Development Institute has been working with the 12 organic dairy farmers who are launching Maine Organic Milling in Auburn, ME, a farmer-owned cooperative to mill and mix organic feed for their livestock. Read "Maine organic farmers launch grain mill" by Lindsay Tice in a recent issue of the Sun Journal. The farmers are members of Organic Valley Family of Farms cooperative, which helped the group with inventory, technical support and logistics. This partnering is a perfect example of co-ops helping to form new co-ops and grow the cooperative economy (see our recent presentation at the NCBA Annual Conference on "Growing the Cooperative Economy: Co-ops Seeding Co-ops").

The Neighboring Food Cooperative Association (NFCA) is an alliance of over 15 New England food co-ops. Founded in 2004, NFCA has defined its primary long-term desired outcome as a thriving regional economy. A thriving regional economy will include a food system that provides all people with access to healthy food from the region as much as possible. At the heart of such an economy, we see cross-sector collaboration among a variety of cooperative enterprises.

CDI Cooperative Development Specialist Lynda Brushett is teaming up with the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance to work with a number of Community-Supported Fishery (CSF) projects underway in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Maine. Several of these were detailed in a pair of Boston Globe articles by G. Jeffrey MacDonald on January 24, 2010:

A group of organic dairy farmers who suddenly lost their contracts with Hood last year have banded together to find a cooperative solution. An agreement among the farmers, private investors, Smiling Hill Farm in Westbrook, Oakhurst Dairy in Portland, the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, the Maine Farm Bureau and the Maine Department of Agriculture, has helped launch a new company: MOOMilkCo., short for Maine’s Own Organic Milk Co. CDI worked with this group in winter and spring last year.

An article by Kristie Snyder in GreenLeaf, the GreenStar Market newsletter, encourages members to celebrate co-op month in all the different ways available to them, including food, health products, housing, banking, childcare, restaurants, and crafts.

The Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities is holding a Relocalization Conference Sunday, October 18, 2009, 9 a.m. - 6:30 p.m. in Roxbury, MA. The conference will include information, sharing, speakers, panel discussions, workshops, tabling, great local food, music,

A cooperative buzzes in Chicago -- a 100-hive apiary owned by members has been selling gourmet sweet honey and other bee products since the winter of 2003. Read about the Chicago Honey Co-op in this short Orion magazine piece by founder Michael Thompson. Then donate $5 to help them raise their own queen bees.

The launch of the Keep Local Farms program in New England, developed by the Vermont Dairy Promotion Council, New England Dairy Promotion Board, and the New England Family Dairy Farm Cooperative (NEFDFC) with support from CDI, was featured in a recent news release by the Massachusetts Dept. of Agricultural Resources.

The Domestic Fair Trade Association (DFTA) is holding its annual meeting this December 4-6 in La Farge, Wisconsin, hosted by Organic Valley. Both members and non-members are encouraged to attend. For more information, contact Kerstin Lindgren at dftassociation@gmail.com or 617-680-9862.