FARM GENERATIONS COOPERATIVE
Founders: Lindsey Lusher Shute & Michael Parker
Industry: Agtech
Website: grownby.com
In one sentence, how would you describe your cooperative?
We are the farmer-owned marketplace for local food.
What is the mission of your cooperative and what do you hope to achieve?
Farm Generations Cooperative is committed to empowering local farmers while promoting transparency in the food supply chain. We are building the farmer-owned platform for any consumer to shop from farmers in their community.
What are the types of member classes in your cooperative?
We have two types of Class A member-owners: farmers and workers. We also have Class B preferred shares with no governance rights for mission-aligned investors.
What are the benefits for individuals/businesses who become members of your coop?
Farmers are able to control and build equity in an essential marketing service (GrownBy) that their businesses rely on. Workers are able to build equity in participate in cooperative management.
How do you keep things fun and exciting for your members while still running a business?
As a nationally focused company and a fully remote workplace, honestly we struggle with building a fun and exciting culture among our members!
What challenges have you faced in running your cooperative, and how have you addressed them?
Our biggest challenge has been raising capital. As a cooperatively-owned software platform, our corporate structure does not align well with traditional sources of capital in our industry. We have had remarkable success leveraging federal and philanthropic grant funding to build GrownBy, but we are currently challenged by the new administration’s funding freezes. To address this, we are launching our first crowd investment campaign on Wefunder this spring: https://wefunder.com/grownby
What makes your cooperative stand out in terms of services/products?
We operate GrownBy as a platform cooperative. Farmers from all fifty states and Canada are selling on GrownBy. We have positioned GrownBy as a leader in food justice, becoming the only e-commerce site that farmers can use for free to accept SNAP benefits for online sales.
If your cooperative had a theme song, what would it be?
The original Woodie Guthrie version of “This Land is Your Land.”
How is your coop helping to “Build a Better World?”
GrownBy makes it possible for everyone to eat local. More consumers than ever want to buy local, but confusing labels, greenwashing, and misleading marketing make it confusing for even the most conscious consumer to know where to start sourcing more sustainably. When shoppers buy food at a grocery store, farmers typically take home just 17 cents on the dollar. But on GrownBy, farmers keep at least 95% of every sale. Though we are scaling our model in the U.S. first, we have recently expanded our services to Canada and we plan to share our model globally in the future.
Each month in 2025 we will feature a different cooperative as part of our celebration and support for the UN’s International Year of Cooperatives.
