This year’s Coopatopia event will be held as a “Co-op Alley” of booths in the Northwest Cooperative Development Center’s parking lot on 4th and Adams, right in the heart of Artswalk activities. A live Artswalk band & space for food and beverages will be onsite. Coopatopia is looking for artists who would like to display some of their work at a shared booth with a co-op, and talk with visitors about how much they love being a co-op member! Contact Cooptopia for more info on this event.

How is the Olympia Food Co-op involved with Cooptopia?
The Development Committee of the Board is working to create a network of mutually supportive co-ops and collectives in the Puget Sound. An exchange with CECOSESOLA in Venezuela is part of strength-building for this network. Supporting each other operationally, and helping new co-ops grow is part of our goal, too.

Visit our page on the Co-op Movement

The Co-op is upgrading the way that we maintain our membership database and how we apply 10% discounts. Members who are used to just telling the cashier “Pink, Purple, Blue, or Yellow Card” will need to take a couple more steps than that to ensure that your membership is current and that you receive your discount, if you get one.

We know how hard it can be to change old habits, and some of our members have proudly carried their tattered pink cards for several decades. We hope to make the transition as smooth and easy as possible. Every member will need to get a new membership card at the cash register.

Why are we causing such a ruckus at the register?  Our membership records have grown tremendously over the last 10 years and we need new software to help us keep up.  By linking our membership information into the register system, we will have more accurate ways to track dues payments and membership renewals than our current system allows.  There will be other benefits as well, such as automatic applying of discounts and easier ways to resolve returns and overcharges.

Thank you for your patience and for being a member!  The Co-op Staff and Board are grateful to our large and active membership and all the support you show the Co-op year after year.

For more info about becoming a member

Guess who’s turning 2?
Come celebrate the New Moon, Olympia’s Cooperative Cafe, with a drinks & a silent auction. Proceeds benefit an exchange between area co-ops & collectives with co-op workers from CECOSESOLA in Barquisimeto, Venezuela!

History of our exchange with CECOSESOLA 
In 2012, to celebrate the United Nations’ International Year of the Cooperative, the Olympia Food Co-op partnered with The Evergreen State College for a historic exchange with CECOSESOLA, an integrated cooperative of over 50 member organizations in Barquisimeto, Venezuela. This exchange began a rich relationship between our two organizations that continues today. Below is a short film with footage and interviews from our visit in 2012. For more writing and photos, visit the blog, CECOSESOLA: A Co-operative Exchange. To learn more about CECOSESOLA (in Spanish), visit their website at  www.cecosesola.org.

Passionate about getting involved with your Co-op?
Join the Member Relations Committee!

This Committee of the Board is a group of members-at-large, Board, and staff members meets monthly and is tasked to facilitate communication between the membership and the organization. You will receive working member credits for your time (and get a discount on your grocery) plus work in a fun and collaborative team!

Deadline for submission is September 15, 2015

For application PDF to print, click here

Submit application by email at memberrelations@olympiafood.coop or drop it off at either store location with attention to Member Relations.

For more info, contact memberrelations@olympiafood.coop

Harvest Party & Zuke Fest
Sunday, September 20
Westside Olympia Food Co-op

Interested in a food party that celebrates the incredible bounty of our local harvest and businesses? Then join the fun at the Olympia Food Co-op’s eleventh annual Harvest Party Potluck, Sunday, September 20 from 1 to 5pm.

Don’t forget to participate in our Zuke Fest – contest and prizes for biggest home grown zucchini, baked good, or derby contestant.

Fun and music and games and food for all!

Celebrate Local!

The Community Sustaining Fund (CSF) met on Saturday, May 9, 8:30 AM in the community room of MiXX 96, located at State and Washington, for interviews, deliberations, and the subsequent awarding of grants to nine (9) worthy recipients. The CSF did not have sufficient resources to fund all project proponets at their requested level. However, following interviews for nearly three hours, and after an additional hour of discussion, the CSF Leadership Team was able to provide partial endowments in support of each one of the proposals.

The following is an account of funded projects by the CSF in tis spring 2015 cycle:

Arbutus Folk School        $600
TEDx                                  $450
Bee Hives                         $150
Vets for Peace                 $400
US Social Forum              $200
Kiwanis                              $400
Pizza Klatch                      $500
African Diaspora              $200
Power Parenting              $200
________________________________
Total                                 $3100

As evident from the above list, financial support was awarded for a range of very different proposals. It is always heartening to listen to the project advocates and to have them describe with great passion their ideas and the need for grassroots sponsorship. The Community Sustaining Fund appreciates the support the community provides by “rounding-up” purchases at the Olympia Food Co-op and through direct donations. These have allowed the CSF to continue into its 26th year, in support of over 220 projects totaling $90,000.

As printed in Works In Progress, June 2015

On a sunny weekend in June, the Olympia Food Co-op’s Local Committee hosted our third annual Local Eats event. Twenty local vendors offered samples of food and products at our stores and provided an opportunity for shoppers to learn about their businesses and farms. This year’s event was a terrific success with a wide variety of locally crafted products such as spreads, pastries, dairy products, fermented foods, fresh produce, mushroom supplements, salsas, sweet confections, baking mixes, granola, and beverages.

Participating businesses included: Exquisite & Traditional, Smiling Mo’s Bakery, Cobb’s Treats, OlyKraut, Calliope Farm, Sweet Niche Bakery, Pigman’s Organic Produce Patch, 8 Arms Bakery, Tastes Happy, Terrabucha, Mountain Muesli, Tamale Fusion, Jalisco, Flying Cow Creamery, Rawk Star Creations, Host Defense, Tierra Bonita, Peace Love & Raw, Purely From Scratch, and Oly Cultures. Our next event will be at the Co-op’s annual Harvest Party in September.

Congratulations Duncan!

R.W. Knudson, maker of Recharge sports drink, generously donated a nifty folding bike to raffle away to our membership. On June 16th, the drawing was held at the eastside Co-op, and Duncan is the winner! Congratulations! And thanks to all who participated!

Join us for a fancy dinner with The New Moon Collective to help support local cooperatives in an international exchange with CECOSESOLA! The dinner will be held at The New Moon this Friday, June 12th. Thank you for your support!

The Olympia Intercity Transit Program’s annual Bicycle Commuter Contest calls to the community and empowers folks to use alternative transportation. In Olympia and Thurston county, the month of May is full of bicycle commuters. Folks are seen zipping around through the sunny plum blossomed adorned streets. Throughout the month of May, members who ride to the Co-op receive a treat and a Ride Card. Five rides to the Co-op gets your Ride Card entered into the grand prize drawing held June 1st. Come Join the tradition and the sweet Bicycle Commuter Contest!

In 2014 The Bicycle Community Contest made a huge impact!!! The Thurston County Inner City Transit came up with these numbers below. With your participation, we can do even better in 2015!

Registrations 1,437
Mileage logs returned 1,001
Travel days reported 13,093
New participants 498
Teams 69
Average miles per rider 107
CO2 emissions prevented 55 tons
Miles traveled by bike in May 110,859
Sponsors 50

This week, staff of the Olympia Food Co-op signed a letter of support for our friends at CECOSESOLA, a cooperative of cooperatives with over 20,000 associates in Barquisimeto, Venezuela. CECOSESOLA operates as a network of worker collectives that makes decisions by consensus, and offers a variety of services–three large food co-ops, a funeral home, and a hospital, among others–in low-income neighborhoods of Venezuela’s 5th largest city. In 2012, our two co-ops participated in an exchange of workers, in which two staff members from the Olympia Food Co-op had the opportunity to live and work with colleagues at CECOSESOLA, and four staff from CECOSESOLA came to Olympia to work and share experiences with the Olympia Food Co-op and other area organizations.

Now, in the midst of a deepening economic crisis in Venezuela prompted by the drop in international oil prices among other factors, the Venezuelan has made change to its business tax structure that disproportionally impact co-ops, threatening their ability to survive in an increasingly difficult market. Here is a worksheet that shows the impact of the proposed changes (scroll below to see the Translated Correspondence document). Says Ricardo Workers at CECOSESOLA are asking their international partners to write and urge the Venezuelan government to revoke these changes to tax law. Here’s a copy of the letter signed by Olympia Food Co-op staff, which will be translated into Spanish and sent to government officials (scroll below).

Our thoughts and hearts are with our fellow members of the co-operative movement in Venezuela and elsewhere during these economically challenging times!

To read more about CECOSESOLA, and read letters sent by national and international partners, click here cecosesola.org.

Letter signed by staff of The Olympia Food Co-op

Re: Changes in Cooperative Law
Date: 12 March 2015

Dear representatives Jaua, Tariba, Castro, Cabello, Osorio, y Prato,

As a cooperative organization run by a staff collective of 84 members in Olympia, Washington, United States, we are writing to share our experience with CECOSESOLA, an integrated organization of Cooperatives in Lara State, Venezuela. Specifically, we would like to advocate that CECOSESOLA and other qualifying cooperatives be exempted from changes La Ley Organica Technologia e Innovacion, Las leyes del Impuesto Sobre La Renta y del Impuesto al Valor Agregado, which now place an undue tax burden upon cooperatives.

In 2012, the Olympia Food Co-op, a cooperative that aims to make good food accessible to more people by selling local and organic foods at affordable prices, was lucky enough to undergo an exchange of workers with CECOSESOLA. During this exchange, two of our staff members worked with CECOSESOLA for a month, while four compañeros from CECOSESOLA came to Olympia to work with our co-op and other community organizations for six weeks. What we experienced in our exchange with CECOSESOLA was an organization truly committed to cooperative practice, in which all workers bore equal responsibility for running the business and received equal compensation for their work. With their food stores, funeral parlor, hospital, and other projects in low-income areas of Barquisimeto, CECOSESOLA listens to members of the community to find out their needs, and then offers products and services to community members at prices they can afford, prices far below those set by capitalist businesses. CECOSESOLA also employs thousands of workers who work upwards of 60 hours each week to assure that the cooperative continues to provide needed services and goods in their own communities.

The Olympia Food Co-op is a non-profit cooperative that seeks worker empowerment, social justice, and economic equity in our community and throughout the world. As an organization in the United States, we have seen how unbridled capitalism and corporate power, often arising within our own country, has created suffering in our communities and around the globe. We wish to do business in a just, community-centered way, and we have been greatly inspired by our relationship with CECOSESOLA and their strong commitment both to the international cooperative movement, and to the health and well-being of people in their region. Members of CECOSESOLA have traveled Chiapas, Mexico, to Egypt, Germany, France, and the United States, among others, to help support communities in creating true cooperatives—means of production that empower workers while creating greater social and economic justice in their communities. CECOSESOLA regularly welcomes visitors from all over the world who wish to learn and share experiences, and who often leave committed to creating and supporting cooperative in their own countries. In short, CECOSESOLA is a world leader. It would be a great tragedy to see successful, thriving, true cooperatives like CECOSESOLA harmed or even run out of business due to the levying of new taxes they cannot afford.

During difficult economic times, cooperatives have the unique ability to offer solidarity pricing and to be responsible to their communities in ways many profit-driven businesses cannot or will not. We believe true cooperatives are more resilient during economic crises than many other businesses and hope you will continue to support cooperatives in practice and law.

In cooperation,
The Olympia Food Co-op Staff Collective

Translated Correspondence from CECOSESOLA

We are writing to inform you of the great harm that is being caused by a set of laws against cooperatives deeply committed to social change. As a consequence of these laws, far from receiving the protection from the National Government guaranteed by the Bolivarian Constitution (articles 118 & 308) the worker-run cooperatives that are revolutionizing economic practice have not only been abandoned, but treated worse than any traditional capitalist business. In Appendix 1 we’ve shared the experience of CECOSESOLA as an example of this type of cooperative.

We are sure that these measures have been taken, unaware of their grave consequences, since they will bring to an end processes of social transformation that have supported the creation of non-capitalist means of production.

How can we justify that capitalist businesses have priority over these cooperatives whose practices you find outlined in the objectives and priorities of the National Plan?

It is true that many cooperatives have deviated from practices outlined in the cooperative act. Some disregard the stipulation in the Special Law of Cooperative Associations that mandates that all workers be members, and that all profits be reinvested in the cooperative. These cooperatives function like capitalist businesses, using the cooperative guise to evade the Labor Law and benefit from the measures stipulated by the Bolivarian Constitution that obligates the State to support and promote cooperativism.

Perhaps due to the bad example set by these false cooperatives, and a lack of awareness, they have progressively eliminated the laws that, based in the Constitution, allowed the support of true cooperatives. In the Organic Law of Technological Sciences and Innovation (LOCTI) as well as the recent modifications made to the laws governing Income Tax (ISR) and the Added Value Tax (IVA), they treat all cooperatives as if they were capitalist businesses. On top of this, the Cooperative Law requires us to put aside a substantial amount of funds aimed at social ends. True cooperatives find ourselves at a disadvantage compared to capitalist companies and we see ourselves being forced to disappear.

Like we show in Appendix 2, based on the new laws, cooperatives must dedicate 37% of their Total Sales (Gross Revenue) to taxes and social funds, leaving only 63% for operational costs. Capitalist enterprises are only required to set aside 15.5%. A cooperative that conforms to the Cooperative Law, where all workers are members and all profits are reinvested in social programs, is obligated to divert more than double what a capitalist business is required.

In order to avoid bringing about the end of a cooperative movement committed to social transformation, we propose that the State look for a way in which cooperatives have, at least, the same economic conditions as capitalist businesses. This means exempting these cooperatives from paying the above-mentioned taxes. Of course, for this to happen, the National Superintendent of Cooperatives will need to testify that they comply with the required social stipulations outlined in Article 90 of the Special Law of Cooperative Associations.

We thank you in advance for any effort on your part that could help this situation.

APPENDIX 2:

*This amount of IVA is an approximation.

**As required by the cooperative law all workers are members and don’t receive salaries or wages, but instead take advance payments from profits.

As a result: cooperatives must dedicate 37% of their Total Sales (Gross Revenue) to taxes and social funds, leaving only 63% for operational costs. Capitalist enterprises are only required to set aside 15.5%.

A cooperative that follows the Cooperative Law, where all workers are members and all profits are reinvested in social programs, is obligated to divert more than double what a capitalist business is required.

As the garden supply areas for both Co-op stores begin to fill with all of the great spring offerings for local gardeners, it is important to recognize the folks who bring those wonderful organic starts of herbs and veggies to us.

Chris Robinson and Melissa Southwick have been supplying the Co-op with starts for over 10 years. Farmers for the past 30 years, they have been farming their fertile Spring Creek Farm near Rochester for the past 16 and offering their bounty at the Farmer’s Market for around 30 years. In the summer, gardening becomes a family affair when Chris’ two older daughters come home to help with the busy farming season.

Early in their work tilling the soil at Spring Creek Farm, Chris and Melissa decided that they wanted to grow plants that worked with the environment. Because lavender doesn’t have to be irrigated, and deer leave it alone, they decided to grow it on 3 acres of their open, at one time cattle pasture land. At that time they were growing and selling around 60 varieties of lavender and also making body and essential oils to sell. Now they farm about 1 1/2 acres filled with 5,000 lavender plants of about 30 varieties, plus 250 varieties of herbs and veggies. From this bounty, they sell bulk lavender, and fresh and dry cut bouquets at the Farmer’s Market, and to the Co-op they bring perennial and annual herb and veggie starts.

Although they are not certified, they work hard to grow organically. “All our materials are listed by the Organic Material Review Institute,” Chis told me. “We make our own soil out of the compost that comes from the Olympia curbside waste and gets composted in Silver Springs. It is certified organic through Washington State. We add other things, all from that list of organic materials, but that is the main ingredient.” He appreciates the fact that this creates a closed loop effect from household to compost to farm and back to household.

Chris pointed out that their watering system is basically sustainable. “We have 3 wells,” he said. “One is gravity-fed and the other two are pump wells.” I learned that during part of the year Chris and Melissa are able to water from the gravity-fed well, transferring to the other pump wells as the season turns dryer. He is proud of the fact that much of the watering on the farm is done off-the-grid.  “Watering the veggie starts is done by a solar pump set-up we have on one of the wells,” he proudly stresses. He also adds that they have been quite frugal. “We recycle as many pots as we can. I just recently bought 3,000 pots from a grower who is going out of business. We haven’t bought new one-gallon pots in 15 years,” he told me. It is obviously important to him to be running an operation that walks as lightly as possible on the earth, while at the same time producing good, healthy, products. “The emphasis of the farm,” he told me, “is to be as low-impact and sustainable as possible, while at the same time providing a quality product.”

So as you begin to prepare your garden for the coming growing season, know that you can find just about every wonderful organic start you are looking for at both Co-op stores, Eastside and Westside. Come and be greeted with a large variety of starts from Spring Creek Farm: herbs, peas, onions, leeks, lettuce, kale, spinach, beets, corn and beans. They are also expanding this year to offer blueberries, strawberries, hops and figs, so look for these too. And…Happy Gardening!

We’ve just barely entered March and yet it already feels like glorious spring! It’s hard to ignore that vibrant blue sky, the lovely golden sun, and those flower bulbs peeking up through the ground. With the milder weather, we may see some spring crops like radishes, arugula, and asparagus, come on earlier this year.

So far, however, we are much in the same place as usual for March– Northwest storage produce has mostly run out (though we’re still able to get a few NW potatoes, onions, leeks, roots, and apples), and the spring delights mentioned above have yet to begin. We have had a fantastic citrus season, and though it is beginning to wind down, we are still enjoying some wonderful standouts like Heirloom Navels, Murcott and Tango tangerines, and Oroblanco grapefruits.

While we wait for the Northwest produce season to begin, we can also enjoy the great deals we’ve been seeing on cruciferous crops such as Cauliflower, Brussels Sprouts, Kales, Broccolini, and Romanesco. Looking forward to spring…!

By Erin, Produce Manager