The Collaborative Farming Podcast · No-Till Market Garden Podcast

Perspectives on Starting Different Cooperative Business Models, Roundtable at the TN Local Food Summit (Live Recording)

·1 hr 5 min·4 clips

Rihanna Michelle says Black Lives Matter Nashville got kicked out of libraries and other meeting spaces.

Jackson Rowlett opens with a live roundtable recorded at the Tennessee Local Food Summit. He is joined by Jameson Parker of the Moonlight Collective, William Crenshaw of the National Food Co-op, Rihanna Michelle of the Water Bear Cooperative Land Project, and Lexi Close of the Appalachian Producers Co-op. The conversation is framed as a look at starting a cooperative business from several angles. Before the roundtable, there is sponsor material and a brief thank-you to Natalie Seavers for inviting him down to the summit. At the center of the episode is a practical question: how do you make a cooperative feel open without making it too expensive to keep alive? One guest walks through early membership ideas built around low-barrier access. That meant dues that looked manageable on paper, but did not always turn into actual payment. The episode keeps returning to the gap between broad participation and the realities of keeping the organization running. Fiscal sponsorship comes up as one way fundraising has been handled. Community and family-based fundraising also appear as part of the mix. The guests talk about starting with a small number of members and seeing that number change over time. That churn makes onboarding and education a real operational issue rather than a detail. The group does not assume people will just meet and agree. Instead, they talk about writing things down, clarifying responsibilities, and making the structure easy to understand. Ownership becomes more complicated than it first sounds. The episode asks what matters most in a cooperative: money, labor, or land stewardship. That creates tension, because equity is not the same thing as cash. The discussion turns to what it means for someone to work the land and whether that work should count as ownership. It also asks whether owner is even the right word. Some of the conversation leans instead toward stewardship and shared responsibility. By the end, the episode lands on a careful view of cooperative building. The pace is slower than a pitch deck, and that feels deliberate. The guests keep choosing real constraints over easy slogans.

As heard by us

A grounded roundtable on the money, labor, and ownership tradeoffs behind a cooperative business.

This Tennessee Local Food Summit roundtable pairs Jackson Rowlett, Jameson Parker, William Crenshaw, Rihanna Michelle, and Lexi Close in a plainspoken discussion about how a cooperative business actually gets off the ground.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Want the real tradeoffs behind starting a cooperative business, not the polished pitch?

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Collaborative Farming Podcast