b'We cant fix a broken food system with a broken finance system, says Natalie Reitman-White, vice president of organi-zational vitality and trade advocacy at OGC. The company is a B Corporation, although Reitman-White points out that while the benefit corporation structure offers some protection against selling the company to the highest bidder on paper, there is currently no legal precedent for the use of that provision. In our experience, steward ownership models, such as our Purpose Trust, are the only proven way to fully lock in a companys independence over the long-term via the removal of all financial incentives to sell.Cooperatives and Credit Unions. Organic Valley and Equal Exchange are cooperatives that have been playing leadership roles for decades, nationally and internationally, respectively, in organics and fair trade. Recently, Our Table Cooperative, Poudre Valley Community Farms and Maine Harvest Federal Credit Union are pioneering new ways for cooperatives to help build local food systems.Discussion. Cooperatives have their roots in England at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, when the enclosure of the commons drove many small farmers off the land and into cities. In the U.S., the first cooperative was a mutual fire insurance company founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1752. The first dairy cooperatives were formed in 1810. The Federation of Southern Cooperatives was formed in the 1960s to support black family farmers. Today, the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives reports that there are more than 2,000 farmer-owned co-ops. The National Co+op Grocers Association represents 200 stores in 39 states with total sales of $2.1 billion and 1.3 million customer-members.In the past few years, Our Table Cooperative (Sherwood, Oregon) and Poudre Valley Community Farms (Fort Collins, Colorado) have been formed, using a multi-stakeholder cooperative model 25'