The way forward for OurField Weston..
Grahame Hunter
Public
Seen by 45
Abby Rose: I just updated the title of this group to be more general about the way forward for OurFieldWeston as I think we have moved into a more general discussion now. (Jan 24th 2018)
_Background _
We have 43 members in the OurField Weston co-operative: 42 members with one farming share, and John Cherry who has 18 farming shares, so a total of 60 farming shares altogether. For each farming share £150 was subscribed.
In addition, the external co-operative members but not John Cherry contributed £50 to theOurField organisers account from which various external costs and events have been paid.
The co-operative farming account has £3,952 in cash so each farming share is worth now £65.82 _ and also _ 250kg of unhulled spelt from the 2017 harvest.
The cooperative farmed a large part but not all of one field (20 acres out of 28 acres).
In the next year I would propose as follows
That John is bought out of his major stake in the farming shares (it is anomalous, as he is effectively “employed” by the cooperative to farm for them)
That the cooperative farms the entire field (so takes on a further 8 acres in addition to the present farmed area of 20 acres)
That the increased risks of the above are partly mitigated for the present cooperative members, by attracting 18 new members to replace John's large stake – so retaining the original total of farming shares at 60.
__ If these points can be agreed,__ the consequential matters going forward are:-
At what price do the new members acquire their farming shares?
Do new co-operative members also pay £50 away, for the organisers’ portion?
Is it reasonable that if the organising committee is allowed to fall away, that _ the administrative and event costs are taken up and apportioned by all the 60 farming cooperative members equally_ (some members may not attend events)?
Are the members of the co-operative willing to contribute to a continuing accounting / facilitating role which will have some costs: probably around £30 monthly, or 50p per member per month.
What will be the method of calculating the price at which any retiring members would be paid out?
Will present co-operative members be allowed to increase their farming stake - ie to acquire one or more new farming stakes from retiring members?
If yes to existing members increasing their stake, would they then be allowed more votes in polls?
Christine Lewis Tue 30 Jan 2018 4:54PM
Happy to nominate myself to the small group to help look over options for working as a virtual group. If I remember someone else on this forum did a post about Loomio and options a while ago as well. Will try and dig that out as a starting point.
Grahame Hunter Wed 31 Jan 2018 11:46AM
great Christine..you are the pop up committee head. Now we need 2 more and you are off!
Darren Thu 1 Feb 2018 10:41PM
I'm up for being involved.
I've started a pad with some of my initial thoughts on this, where anyone else can add suggestions/thoughts if they have any, especially if they don't necessarily want the commitment of being in the pop up group.
I started it with a section on potential requirements for any tool(s) we use - interested if anyones got any to add?
Just click in the text and type (possibly may not work well on some phones - but you should be able to read it)
Christine Lewis Sat 3 Feb 2018 1:23PM
Thanks Darren and the pad works well for me - I will continue to add in some thoughts
Grahame Hunter Tue 13 Feb 2018 3:15PM
thanks Darren, I have added a comment in your Pad..not sure how to see who is each colour..I am red.
Grahame Hunter Tue 30 Jan 2018 11:16AM
Bank Account
We now have a bank account in the name of Our Field. Because this is a public forum, I will not give the a/c name and details here. The account holds the cash funds of the members.
Grahame Hunter Tue 30 Jan 2018 11:19AM
ideas for a cooperative structure from Darren et al
Darren @darren4 has done some valuable work on how the group may organise themselves going forward. I have not ignored this; but my suggestion for now, is that we should first determine who is leaving, who is staying and who are the new Our Field members - and then the reformed and enlarged group of 60 members can determine what they want to do.
Tony Allan Wed 31 Jan 2018 9:26AM
Thank you Grahame for seeking comment on next steps.
Loomio - works for me
Bank Account - good news
New members - I propose to invite about five friends. Have we a couple of paragraphs summarising the purpose, organisation, note on Lannock Farm Weston, etc.
Does it matter that those whom I would invite would all be male and elderly? One of the features that attracted me to OurField was that the leadership was young and not male.
Grahame Hunter Fri 2 Feb 2018 10:23AM
@darren4 Thanks Darren - so with you and Christine that makes 2 for the Loomio investigation.._can one more person any age gender or tech level put themselves forward to review Loomio in a group of 3 with Darren and Christine? As before a small £20 honorarium for the time and involvement. _
Grahame Hunter · Tue 30 Jan 2018 11:12AM
Loomio
There have been continuing issues with Loomio. I have no especial loyalty to it and it has some particular defects, although perhaps some of these are remedied in the paid version..
I would like to suggest
a little pop-up group of 3 current members including at least one person with very limited technological savvy should look at the options - eg forums, paid Loomio, etc and suggest how we want to communicate in the year ahead if we do not wish to stay with Loomio
that the members can then vote to switch or not and the vote will be binding on all
that each of the group be remunerated £20 from general funds (so £60 total, £1 per member stake) for undertaking this research which is sure to take them several hours..
_ If not more that 5 people object to this, and if at least 3 persons nominate themselves then they can start_
For true randomness, if there are more than 3 applicants, I will select them by rolling a dice. The group of 3 will then communicate amongst themselves however they like and set their own terms of reference!