When we think of other excellent Willamette Valley farm businesses, Our Table Cooperative is right at the top of the list. Narendra Varma, the executive director of Our Table, was kind enough to sit down with me and describe his business.
Varma started his certified organic business on 58 acres in Sherwood in 2013 with a big idea. He wanted to find a way for the local food industry to thrive along with the community it serves, so he designed the first multi-stakeholder cooperative food business. He believes Our Table is still unique nationally.
It is much more than a traditional CSA: While there you can shop for groceries, order items from their fresh deli, have coffee with friends or check out their schedule of community functions. You can also pick flowers or berries and check out their new dual purpose solar power field being installed by OSU scientists.
“The idea was to bring the whole community together with an ownership stake in that localized food system,” he said. “So with Our Table we are trying to bring together all the people involved in local food from the people who grow it and raise it and butcher it and cook it and distribute it and do the books and everything, all the way to the people eventually eating the food in their own homes. They all have a stake in the business.”
He described a three tier stakeholder setup: employees, producers and customers. Each of those groups can buy into the business and participate in decision making and in profits and losses.
Deck Family Farm was one of the earliest producer shareholders in Our Table. Varma grows vegetables and fruit on his farm, but not livestock.
“We looked at all the things that we don't do on our farm,” said Varma. “Livestock was one of them, especially multi-species livestock, and we asked who do we know in Oregon who is doing it the way we think it should be done? We found Deck and chatted with them to see if there was interest, built a relationship, and got them on board. Since then, we've had many others who've joined up.”
The business is structured legally as a shareholder cooperative and he designed the buy-in rates and decision-making processes to be appropriate to the different classes of owners.
“The board of directors decides every year what percentage of profit or loss should be distributed to its members or shared amongst its members,” Varma explained. “So if you paid in $1,500 as a producer,” he said, “and there's a loss that's been assigned to you of a hundred dollars in one year, then now your share is only worth $1,400.”
Employee owners pay in $5,000 for their portion of the business and have a larger share of profits and losses, and a larger decision-making role. Consumer owners pay $150 to become shareholders in the business and do not participate in profits or losses. If they decide to drop out, they receive 100% of their contribution back.
When picking up your share of food, the process is also unique. The members go into the store and shop from bins of produce and from coolers, taking only the items they want. This in-person shopping requirement is designed to create a feeling of abundance and of community among the members, something Varma is passionate about.
“CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. What we were finding is that when you have a box [delivery] design, especially where you're delivering boxes at various locations around town, you miss out on the community because people just come pick up the box and they never see anybody else or talk to anybody,” he said. “I felt like both the community piece and the support piece was starting to get diluted in CSAs. So in order to bring that back, the first thing we did is we said, okay, all CSA pickups happen at the farm.”
Outside, on the farm, Varma is excited about their new solar array. He describes a field covered in solar panels which are installed high off the ground so that there is room to raise shaded vegetables underneath.
“Over the years, with climate change, we've found that lettuce and salad mix yields have really been falling substantially in the summer months,” he said. “But of course, demand for those things in the summer is super high… Everybody wants to go eat salads! So we've been thinking about, well, okay, how do we grow this cool-season plant in a cooler climate? And shading it out is sort of the obvious thing.”
When this solar system is complete in a couple months, Our Table’s farm will be run entirely on independent electricity sources. And they will have a more consistent lettuce crop throughout the summer!
“So that's super exciting to work with OSU scientists and test this idea,” said Varma. “It is kind of a two-way harvesting of sunlight, really. I mean, at the end of the day, that's all we do as farmers anyway.”