What is next? How to make farming profitable for the farmers.
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Competition will kill your business. To make algae farming a profitable industry, individual farmers must organize and present a united front to industry. If you sell your kelp directly to the market, you may make more, but you cost the growth of the industry and long term stability.
Greenwave needs to be a co-op of farmers. Where the co-op trains the farmers and buys the kelp from the farms. Then the industry has one source of kelp so there would be limited cut throat. One co-op can handle all the farms from Nova Scotia to New York. That kind of muscle will also get listened to in the political arena. A good co-op can get the states to follow their licensing model. Streamlined permits? To raise money for your co-op you can sell shares of stock, a trick not readily available to individual farms.
As a non-profit, Grennwave is limited to its charter. As a business, Greenwave can grow with profits and in turn help farmers to be more profitable than they could alone. United we stand, divided - we don’t do so well.
Hi @bob_llewellyn , I'm not from the USA, and I am definitely not a lawyer, but from my limited knowledge of consumer law in the UK, I think that doing what you propose here would most likely run you afoul of consumer protection laws. Do the laws, where you are proposing this co-op set itself up, allow price fixing agreements?
@iskander_bond
Farmers in the US used to all be members of co-ops but big corporations have taken over farming here. The family farmer is all but dead. However, co-ops act as a broker and is not price fixing. We all put our product in a big pot and sell all of it as one unit. This is the only way, small farmers can compete with the likes of Archer/Daniels/Midland. If your government is interfering in your life to that extent, maybe its time for a new government. We are having to do something like that here too.
@iskander_bond
Farmers in the US used to all be members of co-ops but big corporations have taken over farming here. The family farmer is all but dead. However, co-ops act as a broker and is not price fixing. We all put our product in a big pot and sell all of it as one unit. This is the only way, small farmers can compete with the likes of Archer/Daniels/Midland. If your government is interfering in your life to that extent, maybe its time for a new government. We are having to do something like that here too.
@bob_llewellyn are there places where you can learn how to set up a co-op like you propose? I would like to do something Similar in St.Lucia.
Thanks
Julien
@julien_jeanpierre94
There are a lot of ways to set up a coop, because it depends on what you want it to do. I might recommend reading an article located at https://fitsmallbusiness.com/what-is-a-cooperative-co-op/ A farm coop is different than a buyers club but both are basically a coop.
@julien_jeanpierre94
There are a lot of ways to set up a coop, because it depends on what you want it to do. I might recommend reading an article located at https://fitsmallbusiness.com/what-is-a-cooperative-co-op/ A farm coop is different than a buyers club but both are basically a coop.