Rural Cooperation for the 21st Century: Unique Opportunities for Farm Families

There is growing demand for authentic family farm food with a ‘clean, green’ image. Farmers can avail of this market opportunity by selling their products directly to retailers and consumers and retaining a larger margin with higher profits. However a supportive and regulative framework is required to serve the needs and interests of both farmers and consumers and to achieve market success. Following on from the TASTE Council Summer School which focuses on certification and branding frameworks, this conference focuses on cooperative approaches to meet the practical needs of farmers in bringing food products directly to consumers Full-time farmers can experience challenges in fulfilling the range of branding, processing, marketing, sales and distribution activities required to make their business a success. This conference presents a model, originally developed in the US that addresses some of these challenges. The “Agriculture of the Middle” model recognises the need to maintain traditional family-operated farms to protect localized farming knowledge and for reasons of social, cultural and environmental sustainability. It is argued that traditional produce that has an authentic Irish ‘family farm’ brand is increasingly sought by socially and environmentally aware consumers. Democratic cooperative and partnership approaches that are used in the “Agriculture of the Middle” model to assist farmers to become more profitable while also meeting challenges in branding, marketing and retailing are explained. The conference features three speakers from the US who pioneered the “Agriculture of the Middle Model”. The aim of the conference is to explore and debate how the model could potentially be adapted to the Irish context to benefit farmers and consumers alike.