Ideas/ Food Cooperative
Status - Brainstorm
Drafted - April 02 2025
What if there was a way to demonstrate to people that the forests have more value than just the one measured in wood after you cut it down?
What if there was a way to incentivize them to take their own power back from the big food corporations that year by year are tightening the leash around the healthy nutrients that enter our bodies and treat us as the frog in the boiling pan, gradually increasing the temperature until it reaches boiling point?
What if we can create a sustainable business model that is fresh, cool and replicable, making use of current technology in cooperation with nature and the human heart to bring fresh, local and organic food to customers?
What if all of that is possible? How would it look like?!
Example 1 - Food forest for “fructe de uscate”
- We buy a forest & we adapt it to grow hazelnuts and other dry fruits (e.g. peanuts, almonds or whatever grows in the region)
- We start making a product out of the harvest – hazelnut cream or butter or even milk, that we not only use internally (at the center) but sell to people in romania (the price of it in Europe right now is ~10Euro for 400g) to make an income
- The point is not to make huge profits, but to make a sustainable income that allows us to continue our work and to continue life at the retreats center
- So we share the model and even other resources freely with others so they can replicate it in their region – we can share tools, workshops, make the technology Open Source, etc.
Benefits:
- people start growing their own food, re-connecting with the land and with nature
- the food forest, unlike a plantation would be less labour intensive and more of a passive growth, as the forest knows how to take care of itself after it’s started, so the passive aspect could attract newbies
- we could even offer the buy their harvest from them and produce it in our own facilities by that point, so they focus only on the food forest part. Really passive now
- People start valuing the forests for other reasons than cutting them down, and thus the ecosystems return
- Bonus: people start working in right relationship with the Earth and nature, and indirectly start healing
Example 2 - Farmers Cooperative with an online Interface
On the back end we start to connect with local, honest farmers in our region that we vet for the quality and honesty of the produce.
On the frontend we offer an online interface for customers to buy. It will be food produced in an area of 100km radius or so, fresh and nutrient rich.
We take care of the distribution and marketing.
We don’t need to scale outside of our region, and outside of making a sustainable living for ourselves and for everyone involved in the cooperative. The point is not to scale and become another centralized corporation that values profits over people and sits at the heart of the controlling systems of the Empire, but to bring people back to their power, back in connection with the land and with nutrient rich food from their region, not from 1000s of km away like the supermarkets provide. Yes there will be less options but richer nutrients.
Our job as the online market is to inform people of the “cool” effect on eating local and organic rather than “mango din peru care a plecat din Peru acum 20 de zile si si-a dat viata pe vapor inainte sa ajunga pe rafult de la Kaufland.”
We can build technology based on blockchain to take care of “supply chain” offering full transparency and trust.
We can also use crypto as an payment option, to promote the decentralization even further.
We encourage others in other regions of the country to do the same, by sharing the business model freely, affiliating with them, maybe taking over some parts of the distribution, etc.
Benefits
- more people are eating nutrient rich locally grown foods
- the farmers (taranii) have an incentive to continue to farm, and to go back to their roots
- more power comes back to the people
- by using a decentralized network and technology this is more future proof in case of possible wars and other life government shutdown type of events
This is simply a quick brainstorm triggered by our conversation in the group and nurtured by sitting in ritual with the cacao. Feel free to add any thought or idea too. I think there is life in this, and it connects with the Natural Center of Arts and Therapies, as all of this can start there, and it could be one way to make it sustainable.