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Nationwide, there are two jobs available in agriculture for every new job seeker. Farmers and ranchers in the Rocky Mountain West haven’t escaped the problem of securing reliable, efficient labor, and the current lack of available labor especially affects smallholder and family farms and ranches.

One-member, one-vote is a long-standing practice in co-operatives, ensuring that each member-owner-patron has an equal say in basic governance and that power is not concentrated among those that have contributed the most capital.

The Black Socialists of America have put together a “dual-power map” of the United States and a broad strategy that I highly recommend exploring:

Full Barrel uses Loomio’s decision tools for a number of day-to-day operations from voting on meeting dates to voicing their opinion on important decisions.

“It creates a space for people to practice democratic decision-making on things that are both high and low stakes.” -Matt Cropp

It’s hard to believe it was over 10 years ago that I wrote these booklets, together with the excellent cartoonist and illustrator Angela Martin and our patient and knowledgeable editor, Sarah Alldred (then at Co-operatives UK) now at the Co-operative College.

Read the transcript at lowimpact.org

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To me, this has been a useful way to put it into words: Co-ops have traded lateral relationships for vertical ones.

There are two new websites in the global coop online ecosystem that deserve more attention:

Respect doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's a characteristic of exchanges between people. While I haven't found it particularly helpful to ask (or demand) to be respected, it occurred to me that it might be powerful to commit to communicating in ways that the recipient would consider respectful—to adopt a standard where group members would make an effort to understand what style of communication would come across as respectful to their audience and then try to engage them in that way. 

The report claims the federation no longer aims to put in place measures that contribute to the economic emancipation of its members, but rather to maximise returns and surpluses. And those who run the federation now come from management schools or the banking community, it adds: and because its management is no longer politically active but paid professionals, Desjardins has lost its mission.