If you live in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, you might have visited the annual Seward Arts Festival last weekend which featured more than 200 artists, musicians and peformers, with open studios, performance and live music events throughout the neighborhood.
Seward Community Co-op timed their Principle Six launch event to coincide with this festival. The co-op offered food, prizes and specials to introduce the community to our new Co-operative Trade Movement, a joint project of Equal Exchange, Seward Community Co-op and five other leading co-ops across the country.
By all accounts, it was a huge success! There were demos of P6 products, one-day specials on P6 items throughout the store, and shopping cart give aways for those who purchased $20 or more in P6 products. From this month on, Seward Co-op shoppers will be able to see on their receipts the percentage of their purchases that are P6… meaning the percentage of their total shopping dollars which they spent on products meeting our highest values: co-operatively owned, small farmer/producer, and local.
Read more about Seward Community Co-op’s Principle Six launch here.
Read the front page coverage of Principle Six on last Saturday’s Star Tribune business section here.
Small Farmers. Big Change. 
In reading your blog I became curious about how you consider small farmer/producer and local to fit within the 6th Co-operative Principle. Though this principle suggests that co-ops ‘serve their members most effectively and strengthen the co-operative movement by working together through local, national, regional and international structures.’, it does not seem to suggest prioritizing local or small enterprises as partners.
This could be a missed opportunity as existing co-operatives could be strengthened by purchasing and partnering from Equal Exchange. It is also a missed opportunity as purchasing power from EE, along with any other co-op, can spur the creation of new co-ops that bring new jobs to the democratically governed co-operative sector and build the breadth of services and products of co-ops as well.
Equal Exchange has been a strength in the co-operative movement; I have seen a number of members attending conferences, sitting on boards, promoting education within members and traveling to farms ensuring fair trade practice. Launching an initiative supporting a ‘local’ economic perspective weakens EE’s position by overlooking co-operative partners, allowing local businesses to assume qualities of social enterprise without standards, and not promoting the co-operative chain EE has created.
Adam Trott
Member, Collective Copies
Staff Co-ordinator, Valley Alliance of Worker Co-operatives