co-ops

Can We Not Can?

CanGro, the last tender fruit processor in Ontario, shut down in 2006. They removed many productive fruit trees as part of the closure agreement, reducing Ontario’s capacity to produce food. In 2007, Heinz significantly reduced contracts with local tomato growers when the farmers finally won a price increase. Small-scale meat producers struggle in 2010 to find abattoirs to process their product in a cost-effective way. Recently the only freezer facility in Ontario with capacity and segregation for organic closed as well.

There’s something in the air that smells like hope. 

 

A timber corporation pulls out of a small town in British Columbia. A community forest co-op buys out the license. The forest and the right to cut it is now jointly owned by the municipal council, community members, the local First Nation and the union, who have a vested interest in keeping the harvest sustainable.