Bypass the Middlemen and Feed the Community

Abstract

In the 1960s, Bolivar County, Mississippi was one of the nation’s most impoverished due to systemic oppression and the decline of the agricultural industry. Residents responded by drawing from the local area’s history of autonomous Black communities and creating a network of Black agricultural cooperatives and community organizations. Operating on a regional scale within Mississippi, the North Bolivar County Farm Cooperative used agriculture as a strategy of self-determination and self-reliance, offering farmer-members an alternative to participation in the regional economy that was controlled by white elites. It utilized strategic relationships with university and industry partners. The cooperative was committed to community-based governance, relying on, for instance, a board of directors with locally-elected representatives, specialized committees, stores that sold cooperative-grown produce, and community listening sessions used to decide which crops to grow. Importantly, the cooperative decided to bypass intermediaries by establishing its own food processing facilities, critical for building economic autonomy in community food systems.