Producer Cooperatives

Usually, cooperatives are created by people as a reaction to specific, most often local, conditions. Through their joint action individuals show collective or social agency and the conviction that they must work together to pursue their shared interests. In this way, each new cooperative is an experiment and an attempt to change and innovate.

On March 2^nd, 2026, cooperative educator and “recovering farmer” Emi Do and I visited Heather Pritchard at her home on Fraser Common Cooperative Farm, near Aldergrove, British Columbia. After a brief tour of the farm, twenty acres on the foothills above the Fraser River Valley, and a conversation with fellow farm co-op member David Catzell, we sat down for lunch at Heather’s kitchen table and spoke for over an hour. The following is a lightly edited version of her reflections.

Ebony Gustave writes about touring several cooperatives in the Hudson Valley as part of the Cooperative Leaders & Scholars Fellowship.

Investor Owned Firms will continue to seek regulatory treatment similar to cooperatives but without having to adhere to any type of democratic and fairness principles. Competitors of cooperatives can also be expected to search for ways to try to undermine member solidarity.

Designed to process 15,000 kg of green leaves per day, the Sahya Tea Cooperative generates employment for more than 150 workers, most of them recruited from the agricultural working class and peasantry, while also protecting the interests of the peasants amongst the small tea growers.

Ten years after India won its independence in 1947, the Communist Party of India won state elections in Kerala. Right from the start, the left government in Kerala adopted an agenda to smash ancient social hierarchies and customs, provide social goods to the public that were not readily available in the rest of India (including quality public education, health care, and transportation), and construct the basis of working-class and peasant power by defending workers’ rights to organise in unions and build cooperatives.

Mirlo (“black bird” in Spanish) starts from a simple proposal: the music industry does not work for artists or listeners, and it needs a radical reimagining. Two years in, Mirlo hosts a small but growing community of artists, listeners, organizers, and coders who are trying exactly that: taking lessons from mutual aid and militant political organizing and applying them to a platform built cooperatively.

Four videos celebrating the life and works of this year's Cooperative Hall of Fame inductees.

The music industry doesn’t have to be exploitative. What if artists owned the platforms we depend on? What if musicians shared resources, power, and profits—together?

Mari Nishitani discusses her cooperative research trip to two villages in rural Nepal to visit women's cooperatives, on NGO led and one a grassroots effort led by Dalit women.