Happy fall, and happy National Co-op Month! Each October, we celebrate cooperatives as a way to bring awareness to their demonstrated success as business structures. For more than 50 years, Seward Co-op has been a staple in the Twin Cities food co-op scene, but cooperatives have existed formally, and informally, for much longer. Cooperatives throughout history have formed in response to oppression and have thus been closely tied to other social movements.

Until recently, if you asked where cooperatives originated, many people would cite the Rochdale Pioneers. These were the 28 textile mill workers from the town of Rochdale, England, who formed the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society in 1844 in response to poor working conditions, low wages, adulterated food, and exploitation. They created the first sustainable cooperative business and are credited with articulating the guiding principles that became what we know today as the International Cooperative Principles.

But the story of cooperation, and furthermore cooperative economics, is certainly not exclusive to Europeans; it has been adopted by countless cultures around the globe. This is particularly true in African American history. Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard, a political economist and scholar of Black political economy, explains that enslaved African Americans have been forming cooperatives since their forcible arrival to the Americas. These looked like shared gardens, pooled resources for buying others’ freedom, and eventually grew into mutual aid groups, mutual insurance companies, jointly run farms, and more.

In 1948, Minnesota was the first state to declare an official Co-op Month. The Twin Cities were home to multiple “first wave” cooperative grocery stores—five of which were predominantly African American-owned and operated. Many of these started in the early 1940s, more than three decades prior to the majority of “new wave” food co-ops that operate today, including Seward Co-op.

Microgreens Kids Corner: What is a Co-op?

“Co-op” comes from the word “cooperation,” which means to work together to help each other. Co-ops, or cooperatives, are groups of people that decide to work together for a shared goal.

Imagine a Harvest dinner table, where each person at the table contributes a dish that they cooked. When everyone comes together, all of their dishes make a greater spread than anyone could make alone. Then, everyone gets to share in the reward of the delicious meal. Co-ops work in a similar way— building something greater than an individual could do alone—by sharing resources and a common goal.

Explore more resources and activities for kids by visiting the Microgreens page.

Meet Mileston Cooperative

This past summer, you may have seen seeded watermelons from Mileston Cooperative on sale at both stores: we sold more than 7,000 lbs. of them! Established in 1942 in Mississippi, Mileston Cooperative is the oldest Black farmer’s cooperative in the U.S. From the beginning, their primary goal has been to create economic and community development opportunities through large-scale crop production and community inclusiveness. Today, Mileston is a network of 16 farmers growing crops including watermelon, summer squash, corn, and sweet potatoes on more than 2,000 acres of land. They are actively working to implement regenerative growing practices while seeking to widen their distribution networks and add more farmers.