The Power Of Food Co-ops — Good Food Finder

When John Benedict moved to the rural town of McNeal, Arizona, six years ago, he immediately noticed the abundance of agricultural land surrounding him – and how none of the food being grown was found in any local grocery store. Then again, there weren’t any local grocery stores, either.

“I drive around and see all this agriculture, but none of it is available to the local residents,” says Benedict.

Originally from New Jersey, Benedict moved to the Arizona town of 200 people seeking freedom, land, and space; he had no intention of becoming a farmer. However, after working with and learning from different farmers in the area, he started Desert Sky Produce in 2020 to contribute to local food production.

As Benedict’s food production expanded, he dreamed of providing local food directly to the community, especially those who lacked the access and money to buy it, yet there were no clear channels to do so. This need – in addition to a serendipitous meeting at a farmers market – led him to co-found a food cooperative that would begin to transform his rural community.

What are Food Cooperatives?

A food cooperative, or food co-op for short, is a smaller version of a typical grocery store with a mission to serve the community and keep money in the local economy. Food co-ops are member-based, although a membership is not required to shop there, and they secure access to high-quality food at competitive prices. Food cooperatives redefine what it is to be a food retailer while changing how millions of Americans shop for food.

Food co-ops often have a strong emphasis on locally grown and produced products; the extra work put in to procure local products represents an often strong value of the co-op’s owners, members, and customers.

A significant difference between a big-box grocery store and a food co-op is that food co-ops are rooted in the local community that they serve. Compared to traditional grocery stores, food co-ops give more money back to the local economy. Each year, US food co-ops exceed $2.4B in combined sales and nearly 40% of grocery co-op revenue is spent locally, including 19% on local benefits and wages.

The National Co-op Grocers (NGC) is a business services cooperative for retail food co-ops located across the US. The NGC represents 161 food co-ops operating over 230 stores in 39 states and serving over 1.3 million consumer-owners.

The NGC’s 2022 Food Co-op Impact Report measures how community-owned food co-ops work individually and collectively to build a more resilient, just and regenerative food system. The annual report also explains reasons why community demand for food co-ops is increasing nationally; co-ops are not one-size-fits-all grocery stores, but unique businesses dedicated to benefiting their local community members. NCG food member co-ops, on average, purchase from 281 local farms and producers and sell $5.6M worth of local products each year.

Rural Communities Need Access to Healthy Food

While grocery stores are commonplace in urban environments, they are often sparse or nonexistent in rural communities. If there is a grocery store nearby, it's usually a big-box store like Walmart or Dollar General, where most of the food provided is ultra-processed and not sourced locally. Although significant amounts of food are produced in rural communities, it is often exported out of them.

According to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), 76 counties nationwide are without a single grocery store. Additionally, the percentage of grocery sales from the country’s top 20 retailers more than doubled from 1990 to 2020, with the consolidation being more prominent in rural areas. Accessing affordable and healthy food is a real challenge for rural communities, and they have increasingly high rates of food insecurity.

Preserving grocery stores has also been a major challenge for rural communities: small population sizes can make it tough to turn a sustainable profit, rural grocery stores struggle to find vendors willing to deliver to remote areas, and the onslaught of chains such as Dollar General stores make it hard for independent stores to survive, or even be built in the first place.

While some organizations are working to address grocery store consolidation and to increase the availability of rural food stores, others are coming up with community-led innovative solutions.

Meet The Local Co-op & Its Farming Founders

The Local Co-op describes itself as a grower-operated food hub located in McNeal, Arizona, that works to create a more secure and equitable food system in their local community. They do so by connecting local producers and consumers, stabilizing food prices, and creating market channels for local residents to easily access fresh, seasonal foods.

The founding members of The Local Co-op are Jillian Werhowatz and John Benedict, both beginning farmers.

Werhowatz is originally from Michigan and has a decade’s worth of experience working for a popular food retailer in New York. She began farming based on the direct experience she had while in that retail position.

“In the beginning, the company valued local farmers and would source from them, but over the years I started to see less local produce in the store and more imported fruits and vegetables on the shelves. I also started to see certifications, like organic, being watered-down,” explains Werhowatz. “I learned that unless you grow your own food, it’s very difficult to really know how it’s grown and its nutrient density.”

It was during this time that Werhowatz also wanted to reconnect to her family ancestry, who were originally from the Philippines. While living with family during the COVID pandemic, Werhowatz discovered that her mom’s maiden name originated from a Filipino farming culture. She also started gardening.

On a trip to southern Arizona with her friends, Werhowatz felt an immediate connection with the desert landscape and soon moved to Douglas where eventually she met her future co-founder of The Local Co-op, John Benedict, at a local farmer’s market.

“I went up to his farm booth and asked him how he learned to grow food out here,” Werhowatz recounts. “John didn’t hesitate to mentor me, and I began growing at a community garden spot in Elfrida. Then, in 2022, we created an apprenticeship position with Benedict’s farm, Desert Sky Produce, and partnered with the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension’s workforce development program.”

During the apprenticeship, Benedict and Werhowatz both wanted to create a way to aggregate products from local producers and develop more local market opportunities to feed their community directly. In 2023, they developed The Local Co-op and started a Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) program that was financially sponsored by friends and family who wanted to support efforts to feed insecure neighbors. As more people found out about the CSA, they started buying their own CSA shares.

Serving food-insecure communities is particularly important to Benedict, and he describes The Local Co-op’s mission with that in mind.

“We service the streets,” Benedict says. “I come from a low-income neighborhood and grew up around Section 8 single-parent homes. If you don’t have access to healthy food, how can you be expected to improve your life conditions?”

With a focus on organic production and responsible land stewardship, Benedict’s farm centers its business model on making the farm's harvest available to all members of the local community. He also works to empower others to learn how to grow food.

The Local Co-op currently partners with the Double Tabernacle Church which has an onsite kitchen facility, and they drop off local produce as part of the Purchase Local AZ program. While delivering food to the church, Benedict noticed an onsite abandoned garden.

“We have plans to help them revive the garden and teach them how to grow their own food," Benedict explains. “The long-term goal is to have the church members grow the same amount of food that is currently being delivered through the Purchase Local AZ program so that when the funding ends, they have the ability to sustain their local food needs.”

For Benedict, this is also about influencing culture: “If we can show people how good they feel by eating locally-grown, fresh food, then maybe they will stop and say, ‘Why haven’t we been doing this all along, or why did we stop doing this?’.”

Werhowatz, likewise, sees the mission of The Local Co-op centered on the local community.

“We are purpose-driven, rather than profit-motivated,” she explains. “We work on aligning our purpose with profit. And that purpose is to directly feed our communities and support our local farmers and ranchers with integrity.”

The Local Co-op operates a CSA program that serves over 40 families in Cochise County, and about half pay with SNAP benefits or receive financial support from a fund created by private sponsors. The co-op also operates a retail food hub location and participates in various food assistance programs like SNAP, Double Up Food Bucks, Friends of the Farm, and Purchase Local Arizona. Everything directly goes to community members, whether that’s made possible through the CSA, food banks, local restaurants, or community-based institutions.

Bringing Jobs to Rural Communities

Serving their community with local food is not the only goal of The Local Co-op. The co-op is also working to expand capacity for local farmers and bring jobs to community members. Through their purpose-centered business model, they directly support many local producers by providing a market for their product and telling their story. The Local Co-op currently sources from nearly a dozen different producers in the Cochise County area and stocks their CSA boxes and retail store with a variety of local items like napa cabbage, collard greens, tatsoi, blue oyster mushrooms, pistachios, china rose radish microgreens, multi-colored pasture eggs, and ground beef.

Benedict and Werhowatz are strategic in where they place CSA pickup points. Food bank locations like Douglas Tabernacle, Elfrida First Southern Baptist Church, and Sunsites Breadbasket help them reach food-insecure communities. They also coordinate with local restaurants like The Grass Stop in Old Bisbee, Electric Brewing in San Jose, Talking Irons in Sunsites, and Seven Arrows in Elfrida.

“Being able to partner with local businesses at CSA pick-up points has really been key for us,” Werhowatz points out. “Collaborating with businesses that are already serving food and using local ingredients is a win-win. We can bring in more people to their business, support local farmers, and provide accessible pick-up points for the CSA.”

The Local Co-op has, intentionally, built strong relationships with local producers, churches, food banks, and other businesses in Cochise County. Werhowatz and Benedict stress that for them, creating opportunities for mutual and community benefit is what their food co-op is all about.

“Communities thrive when the people who live there have opportunity,” says Benedict. “In McNeal, up to 20% of people live in poverty and a large percentage are not actively participating in the workforce.”

“As the co-op starts to build capacity, we reinvest that money directly into our community and neighbors,” Benedict explains. “We can offer more CSA sponsorships for people needing access to healthy groceries, we can source from more local farmers, or we can directly help with workforce development by hiring delivery drivers or training people on roles they would like to develop within the co-op.”

“We believe skills, knowledge, and experience are the foundation on which a resilient local workforce is built. Food cooperatives, like The Local Co-op, create new opportunities for community members to participate in the food system,” says Werhowatz.

Through The Local Co-op and their vision of its purpose, Benedict and Werhowatz are demonstrating that it’s possible to build a resilient and equitable local supply chain from the ground up, and that can rebuild and revitalize rural communities.