Posts by Andrew Murphy

slysurfer14 said:You don't need a Family Farm, just start a cooperative...
All you need is 7 or 8 founders with a small investment of maybe $1,000-$667....
Only a cooperative deals with monthly overhead....

If you're actually serious about this, I can explain how to set one up and how it works...

I would certainly appreciate that...👍

Jerry Martinez6 said:It sounds intriguing, but

Urban dwellers would need some kind of corporate entity or specific legal status to make this work—I don't know the exact regulations, but you can't pull this off without a formal company. Since they wouldn't be investing directly into a Family farm, but rather through a business, they wouldn't actually be working the land themselves; they'd be hiring employees who need wages, payroll taxes, utilities, and overhead covered. A better way might be if the residents held something like vouchers or credits to buy goods from the farm at a massive discount since they'd essentially be acting like shareholders, but you'd still need professionals to manage and organize the whole operation. The bigger hurdle, though, is that most people living in cities are struggling financially and don't have extra cash for these kinds of investments; running a farm isn't cheap, and there's the risk of total failure due to inexperience, not to mention the complexities of land ownership and all that.
It might be simpler if certain rural cooperatives offered products to the nearest major city at preferential rates, perhaps even negotiating what gets grown and how much, giving citizens priority access to cheaper goods while the city government invests in these rural cooperatives. For example, a cooperative could open five or six butcher shops or markets in the city where residents could buy meat at 50% less than anywhere else just by showing ID. It would be a win-win; either the city has the budget for it, or they take out a municipal bond, and the farmers get a guaranteed market and distribution network ready to go.

The real nightmare is corruption, because if someone like a corrupt mayor or a shady political machine gets their hands on it... honestly, I don't know, maybe cities like New York or Chicago already have similar initiatives?

Exactly right.
That would essentially mean a system of coordinated domestic farming.
Fresh potatoes from a local family farm, grass-fed beef, garlic grown in the California countryside, and honey harvested from the Appalachian Mountains or the Rocky Mountains—you just can't beat it.
The goal is to consolidate private holdings and integrate them into a local cooperative or a similar family farm model.
There would likely be an agreement in place with the homeowners association or a similar neighborhood organization.
We could bypass the whole issue of imported goods and those big-box retail chains that live off their margins. We all know exactly how they play it—whether gas prices are dropping or climbing, they make sure to stay on top. For them, profit is the only rule that matters.
That isn't really the point here.
Social sustainability and nutritional quality are the very foundations of our existence.

Jerry Martinez6 said:It sounds intriguing, but

Urban dwellers would need some kind of corporate entity or specific legal status to make this work—I don't know the exact regulations, but you can't pull this off without a formal company. Since they wouldn't be investing directly into a Family farm, but rather through a business, they wouldn't actually be working the land themselves; they'd be hiring employees who need wages, payroll taxes, utilities, and overhead covered. A better way might be if the residents held something like vouchers or credits to buy goods from the farm at a massive discount since they'd essentially be acting like shareholders, but you'd still need professionals to manage and organize the whole operation. The bigger hurdle, though, is that most people living in cities are struggling financially and don't have extra cash for these kinds of investments; running a farm isn't cheap, and there's the risk of total failure due to inexperience, not to mention the complexities of land ownership and all that.
It might be simpler if certain rural cooperatives offered products to the nearest major city at preferential rates, perhaps even negotiating what gets grown and how much, giving citizens priority access to cheaper goods while the city government invests in these rural cooperatives. For example, a cooperative could open five or six butcher shops or markets in the city where residents could buy meat at 50% less than anywhere else just by showing ID. It would be a win-win; either the city has the budget for it, or they take out a municipal bond, and the farmers get a guaranteed market and distribution network ready to go.

The real nightmare is corruption, because if someone like a corrupt mayor or a shady political machine gets their hands on it... honestly, I don't know, maybe cities like New York or Chicago already have similar initiatives?

Yes. And that really is the million-dollar question.
Let’s just say that if we were to form this local farmers' cooperative, we might only end up with two interested parties: the producer and the buyer.
No middleman required.
Of course, those political parasites and bureaucrats can always smell money from a mile away. They’re always ready to jump in with their schemes and deceptions.
In that case, we really have to count on transparency.

A rural cooperative could potentially provide enough food to sustain an entire urban residential development.
That is the concept at hand.
It leads me to wonder: is it possible to establish a Commercial farm based on capital investments from these residents? They would essentially pool their funds to fund a shared production site in the countryside, intended primarily for their own consumption, while any surplus could be sold directly through the Commercial farm's operations.

I am not entirely certain about the legal specifics regarding a Family farm, but I am considering the term "Small family farm" as a new business model.
The idea involves collective capital being invested into a single property that a landlord then leases out to these investors...
How might one legally structure such an arrangement, and what are your thoughts on the feasibility of this idea?