The Oklahoma Food Cooperative:
Rediscovering the Ties that Bind

The Oklahoma Food Cooperative was born when I decided, three years ago, to buy as much food for my household as I could from Oklahoma farmers.

Robert Waldrop Photo: Hal Cantwell, Oklahoma Sustainability Network

I grew up on a farm in Tillman County. When we needed meat, my father would take a steer to the “ice plant” where it would be cut and processed for us. Every spring my grandfather would plant black-eyed peas. Anybody who wanted black-eyed peas could just go out and pick some. Those are the types of relationships that used to unite rural and urban Oklahomans together in one great web of life.

As I found local food sources, I started a website, www.oklahomafood.org, to share these experiences. I began writing about this on the internet and giving speeches. This led to community meetings throughout the state which brought together a group of people whose goal was to create a cooperative business that is socially just, environmentally sustainable, and economically viable.

The Oklahoma Food Cooperative is owned by its members – producers of Oklahoma foods and the customers who want to buy them. The cooperative acts as agent of the producer members as we sell their products to customer members. We act as agent of the customer members as we find products for them to buy, and organize and deliver the orders.

The cooperative stays out of the pricing decisions. Each producer sets his or her own prices, and receives 100% of the revenue from the product sale. The cooperative adds a small charge to each customer invoice to cover our expenses. We have no employees and use borrowed space, so we operate very frugally.

The first week of each month the price list is posted for that month. The second week, we order. On the third Thursday of the month, the producers come to Oklahoma City, and volunteers organize the retail orders. Thus, a producer in Kiowa County can sell to customers in Enid and Muskogee – and a customer in Tahlequah can buy directly from producers in Lawton and Ponca City.

We are therefore the “Amazing Portable Oklahoma Food Cooperative.” Once each month our network comes together to bring products from farmers and local processors all over the state and distribute them to customers. Eventually, we will go to twice a month and then to a weekly schedule. In seven monthly orders, we have sold more than 10,000 items with total gross revenues of nearly $50,000.

We market our business by presenting “All-Oklahoma Food” meals. At one recent event at my church, we served roast prime rib of buffalo from Wichita Buffalo in Hinton, new potatoes, green beans and yellow squash from PDH Farms in Okemah, artisan breads from Springhill Farm in Kiowa County, and then finished it off with Mrs. Chadwick’s pound cakes from Lawton. Nobody complained about the food.

We are committed to open cooperative membership and democratic governance. Any customer or producer can join the cooperative, and all members are equal; producers and customers alike can buy and sell.

We are opposed to limiting the number of producers who can sell a particular item because we think such limits are a bad idea for the economic vitality of the organization. Just as in a supermarket, producers compete against each other for customer dollars, and that is healthy for the producers and for the customers. Local agriculture has suffered from being dependent upon outsiders for capital. To join our cooperative, each member household buys a capital share of $50. Self-funding by the participants via the sales of capital shares to the membership is the strongest financial base on which to rest our cooperative efforts. It enforces financial discipline (which is critical) and prevents us from getting too far ahead of ourselves and from developing excessive administrative overhead.

We believe strongly in the principles of cooperative enterprise and have structured things so that there is a close relationship between the price of a share of our cooperative and the value of our cooperative. We don’t want our memberships’ ownership to be nominal, but to be real. Thus, one member household –– one share –– one vote.

The purpose of the share price is to fund capital expenditures for equipment, software development, and other things necessary for the startup of the cooperative. Our operating funds are effectively “volunteer sweat equity and borrowed space”; any cash operating expenses are covered by the co-op charge.

Participation in the Oklahoma Food Cooperative does include some challenges. Most of us are not used to buying our groceries via an internet shopping cart, and few producers take orders over the internet. Most people don’t buy their food once a month, and so we have to make some adjustments in how we plan our meals and do our shopping.

But the food is worth it. The members of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative are enjoying excellent food that is healthy and nutritious. We do not feed our families mystery meat from faceless corporations. We know the producers of our food. More than one member has told me that they are also saving money. Producer members benefit from a new source of cash revenue. Every dollar spent through the Oklahoma Food Cooperative creates economic opportunity in rural areas.

We are discovering that the “ties that bind” us are not lost. With every meal, we are restoring and completing the “circle of life,” re-weaving the relationships and connections that once united rural and urban Oklahomans.

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