Food Co-operatives

What are food co-ops I hear you ask?

well.. There are many different variations but the common thread seems to be working towards creating a better world through creating a space for good food to be had. Some co-ops just operate on one day with fruit and veggie boxes, some are open 3 days a week with dried fruit and nuts, flour, eco-cleaning products, some have the best tasting gluten free brownies in the world (ok i may be biased..) Essentially they are what the members make them.

There’s different structures too – some places are completely run by volunteers, some have co-ordinators paid in food credit (Griffith), some have actual paid staff (ANU) and many other mixes are there too just to confuse us.

This working groups links people interested in/active in food co-ops (and worm farms and compost) to enable sharing tips/info, work on common projects and open a platform for people to bring their random, but important, co-op questions.

Our past and current projects include:

• organising a co-op mailout that goes out to all uni and community co-ops in Australia at the beginning of the year,
• keeping an updated co-ops in Oz contact list,
• organising rad and fun co-op crawls (in places where there are a few co-ops to ride bikes around to)
• and other random things.

This year we are hoping to kick-off a co-ops newsletter, offer more support to struggling co-ops and to start to develop product info lists to share around co-ops. If you have things to share get in contact!!

There’s a bunch more info and resources on the asen wiki page

Resources

Food Co-operative Broadsheet (O-Week 08)

Join the E-list: Co_ops_Worms_n_Compost_ASEN_WG-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Or Contact: kristy[at]asen.org.au