Food Cooperatives are Essential For A Just Recovery
Written by David D DeVaughn and Syed Agmal Ali
No eggs, no milk, no chicken, no beans. News flashes of empty shelves, long lines and longer hours at grocery stores are bringing about new awareness of how critical all of the workers in the food chain are for our collective survival. State and local governments have taken note, designating these workers “essential” alongside healthcare professionals, first responders, and those maintaining key infrastructure.
Hoping to retain workers on the front lines during a pandemic, supermarket chains such as Walmart, Kroger, H-E-B, and Whole Foods are temporarily raising hourly pay, introducing bonuses, and implementing new emergency leave policies. When not in pandemic mode, however, many of these same national grocers pay their employees at local minimum wages, assign them variable schedules, and fail to provide paid sick leave. Especially as many of these low-wage workers are people of color, inequitable decisions made by these chains can further exacerbate systemic inequities.
Throughout the country, some grocers are demonstrating a different path, recognizing their worker-owners as essential every day.
“Food coops” can often look and feel just like any other grocery store, but differ in their ownership, management structures, and connections to community. Cooperative grocers are owned by members, either workers themselves or consumers in the community who have bought into the business. Though cooperatives are often governed by boards, the decision-making is democratic, and includes unique benefits:
- Opportunity for underserved communities of color to exert agency and address insecurity in their local food systems;
- Access to space for local organizing and community building;
- Enrollment in benefit programs (i.e. SNAP¹, WIC², SSI³) to ensure members of varying incomes can participate;
- Purchasing from regional farmers and producers of fresh, high quality, culturally relevant foods at affordable prices; and
- Higher wages and stronger protections for workers at cooperatives that have unionized workforces
Right now, during the Covid-19 crisis, cooperatives grocers are urgently responding to their communities’ needs. In Ithaca, New York, Green Star Food Coop is granting workers an additional quarter-hour of paid leave time for each hour worked (a $3.45 value) in addition to the two weeks of paid sick leave each worker is already entitled to. In Minneapolis, the Eastside Food Co-op, a member of UFCW 663, is paying its hourly employees a $2 premium per hour and has temporarily increased its employee discount to 20%. In South Los Angeles, the emerging SoLA Food Coop is ensuring that bulk grains and beans are reaching their members and neighbors while they continue planning for a brick and mortar location.
The $2 trillion Covid-19 federal relief package passed March 2020 allocated $10 billion in funding to the Small Business Administration (SBA)’s Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDLs) and ensures that small cooperative businesses have equal access to the funding. This builds upon changes from 2017, when the SBA first allowed food cooperatives to access its small business grants and loans⁴. With this investment and flexibility from the federal government, local decision makers will have a chance to build towards an equitable recovery with cooperative grocers. Local leaders can provide support to these businesses to ensure the reach and longevity of their community benefits:
- Economic Incentives. While many municipal governments provide financial and zoning incentives for traditional grocers to locate in underserved communities, only a few provide these incentives for worker cooperatives. Government leaders can support and expand upon initiatives like the LA Food Policy Council’s push for “LA Good Food Zones” legislation that would invest in food businesses that meet fair labor standards and other criteria.
- Community Asset Building. Foundation and government funding have been instrumental in cooperative development around the country, including through planning grants, start-up loans, and capital funding. Importantly, these investments go beyond community engagement, membership drives, and physical development, to investment in community assets steeped in collective ownership and accountability.
While the realities of Covid-19 demonstrate how local grocery stores provide vital nutrition and supplies for communities in crisis, they also highlight the food access and labor inequities faced by marginalized communities. By incentivizing and investing in the development of cooperative grocers, local decision makers can address pressing needs that existed before and will outlast this pandemic.
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This is the first in a series of HR&A articles on food policy. As local government leaders, food chain workers, organizers, and consumers consider the changes needed to build a more just and equitable food system, we welcome your suggestions and questions at info@hraadvisors.com.
David D DeVaughn, HR&A Director, is a leader of HR&A’s Inclusive Cities practice. He has a background in food justice and food security policy change efforts. David strives to use a policy and systems lens to hyperlocal, city-wide, and state-wide economic development and public policy change efforts.
Syed Agmal Ali, HR&A Analyst, guides equitable urban development related to food, health, technology, and wealth. Syed previously spent four years working for FoodCorps, a national nonprofit connecting kids to healthy food in school.
[1] United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly “Food Stamps”).
[2] USDA FNS Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.
[3] Social Security Administration Supplemental Security Income
[4] Food Cooperatives now Eligible for Small Business Administration Loans [NCBA CLUSA]: Link
