Friends of Rural New York

Project Collaborators

Hello Listerserv recipients.

This is Duncan Hilchey with the Community, Food, and Agriculture Program (CFAP) at Cornell. CFAP received approval to submit a full proposal to the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (NE SARE), and we are looking for groups interested in exploring the potential for cooperative farm stores in their community.

We are proposing to form a regional learning community of retail enterprise teams (comprised of farm groups and their advisors) to explore the European cooperative farm-owned grocery store model and experiment with a North American version of the concept. Representatives of the learning community will visit France’s Rhône-Alpes region and their network of farmer-owned cooperative grocery stores and a French consultant will come to the U.S. to assist in the business planning, capitalization, and opening of at least one cooperative-owned farm grocery in the Northeast

Europeans have been successfully proliferating the concept of farmer-owned cooperative grocery stores for the last 15 years. The Rhône-Alpes region of Southwest France, with a population similar to the state of Indiana, has a network of 20 stores that are owned, supplied, and operated by farmers. Typically, 10 to 12 farm families own the store, each providing one or two specialties: meats, poultry, eggs, cheeses and other dairy products, wine, juices, canned goods, baked goods, fruits, and vegetables. The hallmark of the stores is real food that is sustainably produced, and one of the farmer-owners must be in the store at all times to answer customers’ questions about production and processing methods.

The strength of the cooperative farm retail model is that it allows the farmers to focus on production while maintaining the advantage of the direct consumer and producer relationship.

Here are two hypothetical examples of producers likely to benefit from a cooperative farm store:

Sarah Thompson has produced and sold pastured poultry directly from her farm for the last seven years. She is an experienced producer and has had numerous buyers, including butchers and restaurateurs, ask her to expand her production. She has the capacity to produce nearly 10,000 birds, but has hesitated to grow that big because she did not want to get into the distribution end of the business. The cooperative farm store concept is attractive to Sarah and her family because she will be able to expand production and bring in more income without needing to work with a distributor or jobber. As a member of the coop she hopes to deliver her birds to a USDA-inspected slaughter plant where they will be picked up by the coop’s truck twice a week. The convenience of this arrangement is just what Sarah has been looking for.

Willard Scrum’s 75-acre, mixed fruit orchard has been in the family for 230 years. Like other farms in the area, they used to sell to a small local processor, but it closed years ago. Since then, he and the family diversified their markets into u-pick, farmers’ markets and grocery stores. But, the children who helped out with retail sales are heading off to college and Willard is wondering how the farm will adapt. Willard is hoping the cooperative farm store will be just the ticket. Willard will be able to pack for the store’s needs each week and will be able to move the same volume of product as before with even better prices.

Activities in the 3-Year Project Include:
1. Two-day summit of enterprise teams.
2. Field trip and tour of coop farm stores in Southeast France.
3. Retail store business planning workshops.
4. Draft and formal review of business plans written by enterprise teams.
5. Selection of projects(s) to assist in capitalization, and opening.
6. In-depth evaluation and financial analysis.
7. Educational programming around the regional on alternative retailing strategies for farmers and small-scale processors.

We would like to identify up to 5 farm organizations, businesses, or cooperatives in the Northeast comprising a diverse group of savvy and experienced producers who work well together and are interested in exploring alternative retailing strategies.

If your group is interested, please contact project coordinator Duncan Hilchey at or (607)255-4413.