If he wanted to, Ted Zettel could scare people away from ever wanting to join a co-operative.
But he doesn’t. Rather, the chair of Organic Meadow Co-operative Inc. is a passionate advocate of the co-op as a business model and a force for social good.
“My dream would be to see farmer co-ops control everything in agriculture, right from seed companies to the retail sector,” says Zettel, a 51-year-old grain farmer from Chepstow, Ont.
It’s a dream tempered by 20 years of hard-earned experience.
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The co-op was founded in June 1989 at the farmhouse of the owner of an organic elevator teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. The 30 farmers attending were told that if they wanted a place to deliver that year’s harvest, they’d better find a way to save the business.
“Had I known that the birthing and nurturing of what is now Organic Meadow, begun that fateful evening, was to consume a good portion of my life, I would have done the prudent thing and stayed home,” Zettel writes on the company’s website at www.organicmeadow.com, tongue only partly in cheek.
Hours of work are involved in co-ops, which inevitably fall on those with leadership abilities but not the sense to keep their hand down when the call goes out for volunteers.
The early years were tough, especially because the co-op, then known as OrganicBio, was forced to do things backward. It raised $2,000 per member, got a lease deal from the elevator’s largest creditor and began running the business. Only after harvest was it able to incorporate and draw up a business plan.
Inevitably, there were personality conflicts. Some members weren’t the co-op type. Individualists who prefer to chart their own course can quickly become frustrated by the seemingly endless discussions and compromises that come with will-of-the-majority decision-making.
A pivotal moment for Organic Meadow came in 1995 when it expanded into dairy. Demand for organic milk was decent but not great – two-thirds of the production had to be sold as conventional milk. With the health food and small retail market saturated, the question was put to the members: should we sell to the big grocery chains?
“That opened up a major division,” Zettel says.
“One group, a minority but a significant minority, believed we should just stop growing. Some were doing well and wanted to keep it small. Others believed we should be reforming the food system and not just becoming part of it. It was a major crisis for us and the start of what became a split in the membership.”
The decision to expand proved successful. Organic Meadow now has annual sales of $25 million and is the country’s largest organic dairy company.
However, financial success doesn’t guarantee peace, and the members recently had another contentious debate over whether to sell their products through Wal-Mart.
“These aren’t easy discussions,” Zettel says. “The people who founded this co-op, myself included, have very strong feelings about reform and about being an alternative movement.”
That’s why when Zettel speaks to groups about co-operatives, he stresses the need to have a strong mission statement. He believes the most important function of a co-op’s board is to keep the organization focused on that mission.
Interestingly, Organic Meadow’s 131-word mission statement not only talks about fair market returns and ecological sustainability but advancing the ideal of co-operation and “the maintenance of a strong rural heritage.”
Those last two bits aren’t just afterthoughts.
Zettel argues rural communities have been ravaged by a corporate model of farming that favours large-scale, highly mechanized operations run by the fewest people possible.
“From a social sense, I don’t think anybody would argue that is good and something we should do more of,” he says.
“Our goal should be to have more people involved in agriculture, but I don’t think that will come about unless the few of us who are left learn to co-operate and work together.”
Putting together a co-op isn’t easy and there are many pitfalls. Zettel highlights three areas as key:
- Do the members share a core set of values?
- Are there capable and experienced people on the board?
- Has the co-op hired experienced professionals and then allowed them to do the job they were hired to do?
Zettel says there are a lot more agricultural and rural co-ops than people realize and recommends they join one to get first-hand exposure.
“I don’t think today’s mainstream farmer looks at co-ops and sees the opportunities that they offer,” he says, adding that describes himself 20 years ago.
“Until you get involved in one, you don’t know what you’re missing.”
Glenn Cheater is editor of the Canadian Farm Manager, the newsletter of the Canadian Farm Business Management Council. The newsletter as well as archived columns from this series can be found at www.farmcentre.com.
