BUILDING THE NEW WORLD FROM THE SHELL OF THE OLD
Community-run Food Co-ops Can Reduce Food Insecurity and Boost Healthy Diets
ByKatherine Kent,Cristy Brooks,Freya MacMillan
May 13, 2025
Source:The Conversation
Image by Robert Ashworth, Creative Commons 2.0
As grocery prices continue to rise, many Australians are struggling to affordhealthy foodand are looking for alternatives to the big supermarket chains.
The recentsupermarkets inquiry, run by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, confirmed Australia’s grocery sector is highly concentrated, with limited competition and rising retail margins. In regional and remote areas, consumers often face higher prices and fewer choices.
One optiongrowing in popularityaround the country is the community food co-operative, or “food co-op”.
Food co-ops are local not-for-profit or member-owned groups where people join together to buy food in bulk, usually straight from farmers or wholesalers. These co-ops can take different forms, including shops, neighbourhood-based hubs, or box delivery models. They typically offer a range of foods such as fresh fruit and vegetables, bread, dairy products, eggs and pantry staples.
By co-ordinating their orders, members canreduce food costs, limit packaging waste, and avoid supermarket markups. Co-ops can also help lower transport emissions byreducing long supply chains.
We’ve been researching the benefits of food co-ops. We’ve found this model couldreduce food insecurityand increase people’s intake of fruit and vegetables.
How are food co-ops run?
Some co-ops are owned and run by their members. Any surplus or profits are generally reinvested into the co-op or shared through lower prices, improved services, or support for local community initiatives.
Other co-ops are managed by not-for-profit organisations focused on improving food access for whole communities.
More recently, digital platforms and apps have made it even easier for people to start or join co-ops and connect with local growers.
Regardless of the model, co-ops areguided by valuesof co-operation, fairness and community benefit, rather than profit.
What does the research say?
We recently publisheda studywhich adds to a growing body of evidence showing food co-ops can play an important role in improving diet and reducing food insecurity.
Food insecurityis when someone doesn’t have reliable access to affordable, nutritious food. It can mean skipping meals, eating less fresh produce, relying on cheap processed foods, or experiencing ongoing stress about being able to afford groceries.
We surveyed more than 2,200 members ofBox Divvy, a community-based food co-op operating across New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. Within this co-op, members join local “hubs”, pool their orders for groceries through an app, and collect their food from a nearby coordinator.
To measure food security, we used aninternationally recognised surveythat asks about things such as running out of food or skipping meals due to cost.
Before joining the co-op, more than 50% of surveyed members were classified as “food insecure”. This is well above the national average (estimated to be around 22%). It suggests many people turning to food co-ops are already under significant financial pressure.
After joining, food insecurity dropped by nearly 23%. The rate of severe food insecurity – where people skip meals and regularly experience hunger – more than halved.
These changes were accompanied by improved diets. We asked participants to report how many serves of fruit and vegetables they usually ate in a day. On average, members increased their vegetable intake by 3.3 serves per week and their fruit intake by 2.5 serves.
The benefits were even more pronounced for people experiencing severe food insecurity, who tend tohave poorer dietsoverall. They ate 5.5 more serves of vegetables and 4.4 more serves of fruit per week while using the co-op.
These are meaningful improvements that bring people closer to meetingnational dietary guidelines. This matters because eating more fruit and vegetables is linked to alower risk of chronic diseasessuch as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers.
Other research has reflected similar findings. A 2020Sydney-based studyfound co-op members were more likely to meet the recommended servings of fruit and vegetables than non-members.
Another studyofThe Community Grocer, a Melbourne-based social enterprise, found their weekly markets offered produce around 40% cheaper than nearby retailers and improved healthy food access for culturally diverse and low-income customers.
Internationally, aCanadian studyof a community-based food box program – similar in structure to some co-ops – reported higher fruit and vegetable intake among regular users. It found a decline in intake for those who stopped using the service.
In Wales, disadvantaged communities that used co-ops reported better access to fresh produce. Similarly inNew Zealand, co-op participants reported better access to healthy food.
In qualitative research, people who have experienced food insecurity say co-ops offer a morealternative to food reliefby offering choice and control over what’s on the table.
Where to next?
Despite clear benefits, food co-ops remain largely overlooked in Australian policy. This is at a time when national conversations aboutprice gouging and supermarket powerhighlight the need for viable, community-based alternatives.
Meanwhile, food co-ops also face operational challenges. For example, regulatory requirements canvary significantly between local councils and states. This makes it difficult to establish, scale or replicate successful co-ops.
Government support could help co-ops grow where they’re needed most. Some measures might include:seed funding and small grants to establish co-ops in low-income communities subsidised memberships or vouchers for eligible households
investment in digital tools and logistics to support efficient operations, particularly in rural and remote areas simplifying regulatory processes.
As the Feeding Australia strategy develops under the Albanese government, there’s an opportunity to consider how community models such as food co-ops could complement broader national efforts to improve food security and strengthen local food systems.
Katherine Kent is a Senior Lecturer in Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Wollongong.
The US government’s escalating trade war has forced us to quickly rethink and prepare to reorient Canada’s economy.
Discussions have thus far focused on developing new export markets and reducing barriers to interprovincial trade. These are important initiatives, but we can do more and better.
At this time of crisis, when our economy, sovereignty and wellbeing as Canadians are increasingly threatened, we need more fundamental and innovative action to make our economy independent, strong and resilient to external shocks.
Our economy must be better for workers, small businesses, families and communities. We need ideas that are both creative and tested—ideas that will find support across the political spectrum. Fortunately, there are policies that meet these criteria: we can make our economy more resilient by making workplaces more democratic, giving workers more ownership and control.
An important way forward is to facilitate the creation of more democratic employee-owned firms in Canada. Indeed, this idea has momentum: federal legislation took effect last year that creates Employee Ownership Trusts (EOTs) as a promising new vehicle to achieve this aim.
In a democratic employee-owned firm, employees collectively own a majority of the company, have meaningful rights to help shape decisions and profits are shared broadly and equitably. Democratic employee-owned firms include a range of possible company structures including worker cooperatives and EOTs.
Employee-owned firms exist in Canada, although there are a relatively small number of them. They are most common in Quebec but there are examples in other parts of Canada. Friesens, which operates in Manitoba, is one of Canada’s leading book printers. They are employee-owned and democratic. Shift Delivery is a worker cooperative and bike-powered delivery firm serving Vancouver. PCL Construction and Chandos construction are 100% employee-owned.
And democratic employee ownership is popular across the political spectrum. A recent US survey found that a majority of Republicans, Democrats and Independents support the concept of employee ownership and would prefer working for a firm owned by employees. Experimental research in the US confirmed these findings and found they hold even when participants are presented with counterarguments against democratic workplaces.
Canada’s federal and provincial leaders should adopt policies to help make our economy more democratic.
BC Premier David Eby has called the current economic crisis a “human-caused disaster.” It is that. But it is also an opportunity. There is a new willingness among Canadians to think and act collectively and collaboratively to make our economy more resilient. There are many reasons why democratic employee-owned firms will help us do just that.
Democratic employee-owned firms are more grounded in their communities. Employee-owners who have homes, families and friends to consider are unlikely to vote to move their businesses out of their communities in response to tariffs or other economic shocks. Nor are they going to run around the globe looking for the cheapest labour force.
Democratic employee-owned firms also have a track record of weathering economic adversity and facing it with creativity. They are less likely to fail during a recession and more likely to maintain employment and wages for their workers, which also means they can help maintain macroeconomic stability for the wider economy.
Research shows that democratic employee-owned firms can be just as, or more, competitive and profitable than conventional businesses. And they are more likely to distribute wealth more equitably, reducing inequality both within firms and across society. Wealth, of course, makes it easier for people to weather economic adversity.
Additionally, when adopting labour-saving AI technologies—another potential threat to Canada’s workers—employee-owners are positioned to share in the firm’s profits and benefit from efficiencies. When jobs and incomes are protected through employee ownership, AI systems have the potential to make work safer, easier and more productive. When workers are not in the driver’s seat, however, there’s more danger that AI systems could put people out of jobs and deepen economic inequality.
Our governments should act quickly to support and incubate democratic employee-owned firms. How can they do that? There are many actionable policies available that have been tried and tested around the world.
In 2024 the federal government passed legislation to support EOTs. EOTs hold the shares of a firm in trust for the benefit of the firm’s employees. EOTs make it easier for business owners to sell their firms to their employees, with the purchase price paid out of the firm’s profits over several years, meaning there is no out-of-pocket cost to employees. Grantbook, a company that advises philanthropic foundations, became the first Canadian company to convert to an EOT in January 2025.
The federal government has instituted a partial tax exemption on capital gains realized through the sales of conventional firms to EOTs, which is in place through 2026. This policy creates an incentive for business owners to pursue this option when planning their succession. As a next step, this exemption should be made permanent and extended to worker cooperatives. These tax breaks may be justified by the larger social and economic benefits associated with employee-ownership.
There are numerous other ways that governments can support and promote the democratization of our economy. For example, they can provide seed grants to establish regional employee ownership centres, a successful approach found in other jurisdictions.
Canada could create a public investment bank with a mandate to cultivate democratic employee-owned firms and provide incentives for conventional banks to lend to these firms. Governments should also ensure that democratic employee-owned firms are eligible for—and prioritized in—existing public investment funds and business support programs. When businesses are being sold or shuttered, workers could be afforded a right of first refusal to purchase them.
Additional tax incentives for democratic employee ownership are also worth considering, such as setting lower corporate income tax rates for these firms and providing personal income tax deductions for workers who put their savings towards creating new worker co-operatives.
Canada is facing an unprecedented threat from an unpredictable and hostile US administration and we need to do something new and different, fast. Our economy will always be affected by global economic trends and external shocks. But we can protect ourselves better than we have done in the past. A new Canadian economy with more—or many—democratic workplaces would be a more equitable, empowered and resilient economy. Now is the time to make it happen.
No comments:
Post a Comment