Stories

Wellspring Harvest’s Newest Milestone

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LEAF Executive Director Gerardo Espinoza with Wellspring Co-Director Fred Rose (Photo by Ben Selden) LEAF has been closely following the progress of Wellspring Harvest Greenhouse, the Springfield-based worker cooperative hydroponic greenhouse that will be providing fresh lettuce to local hospitals,…

Inspired by Nature: Cooperation and Sustainability

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Cooperation is human nature. Our success as a species is largely due to the ability to cooperate flexibly on large scales. Since cooperation boosts productivity, it is worth examining how we can facilitate it. A 2015 study published in Nature…
Prairie Coop Market

Food Coops: Prairie Roots Grand Opening, and Loans from SBA

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Congratulations to Prairie Roots Co-op on their summer grand opening (July 5 2017)! Feels like just yesterday when LEAF approved a loan, together with Shared Capital Cooperative, to finance the construction of their 8300 square foot facility. Prairie Roots is…

Deploying Capital in PPCs

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A Persistent Poverty County (PPC) is defined as, “any county that has had 20 percent or more of its population living in poverty over the past 30 years” (CDFI Fund). The large majority of the 384 PPCs are located in…

North Carolina Co-ops in the News!

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We have two different stories this month from the burgeoning cooperative movement in North Carolina. First, our good friends at the Electric Violin Shop were recently featured on UNC-TV in a lovely video, which gives a history of EVS’ conversion…