Social Enterprises and Alternative Agro-Ecological Food Networks: A Co-operative Business Model for Agro-Ecological Vegetable Seed Production

Alternative agro-ecological food networks (AAFNs) are being advanced by farmers, civil society organizations, academics, and other concerned citizens, who understand the current agri-industrial food system to be ostracizing the socioeconomic needs of small-scale farmers and damaging the ecological processes required for food production. Advocates of AAFNs support transitioning towards a food system that consists of differentially-scaled farms that prioritize food security, community development, and ecological restoration. The transition towards regionally-populated AAFNs is partly constrained by corporate consolidation in all sectors of the food industry and by government policies that favour large-scale industrial farming. Maintaining a diversity of regionally-adapted agro-ecological seed varieties is an essential component to building AAFNs. Yet, the proliferation of hybridized varieties and their requisite agro-chemicals, the implementation of intellectual property rights on seeds, and the concentration of agricultural inputs by corporate agribusinesses, have disrupted the ability of farmers to reproduce agro-ecological seed varieties in Canada. The responsibility for preserving these types of seeds has been assumed by seed banks and small-scale seed enterprises; however, due to the oligopolistic pressures exerted by dominant market actors in the seed industry, these organizations face a variety of economic difficulties in scaling up their socio-ecological missions. Co-operatives are an alternative form of social enterprise that agro-ecological farmers can implement to better hedge against these market pressures and to reclaim ownership of agro-ecological seed production. The research in this report analyzes the feasibility of a regionally-based agro-ecological vegetable seed co-operative in the Greater Golden Horseshoe region of Ontario. The findings reveal that by pooling production from different vegetable seed growers in the region, a seed co-operative can economically sustain the preservation of agro-ecological seed varieties through a democratically-owned mission-based enterprise. In doing so, it is hoped that the co-operative can indicate to the market, the state, and the general public, one kind of organization that can meet the underserved needs of agro-ecological growers, and more broadly, begin to better facilitate a national transition towards regionally-based AAFNs.