Home The EcoCity Concept City of Johannesburg The EcoVillage The Co-operatives Youth Environmental Co-operatives Iteke Waste Recycling Co-operative Shova Lula Cycle Co-operative EcoBanking EcoBuilders Community Ownership Energy Co-operative EcoVillage: a vision of the future The Trustees Acknowledgements	The Co-operatives With equity as a central principle, it followed that all local economic activity stimulated by the programme would require a business structure that embodies such a vision. Co-operatives, where communities and workers jointly own a concern, emerged as the best model. Two years after the establishment of the first agricultural co-operatives, Director of COPAC and trustee Vishwas Satgar says tangible results have emerged. These take various forms. The structures are up and running and they have empowered communities who are now taking the initiative and starting their own businesses using their new skills. An umbrella structure, called the Greater Midrand Organic Agricultural Co-operative, houses six smaller agricultural co-ops, all of which grow organic food both for subsistence and for the local market. Ninety jobs in agriculture have been created as the dream has become a reality and a range of fruit and vegetables have been harvested. “Agriculture is a highly visible example of community progress and is ultimately likely to act as a catalyst and lead to the promotion of deeper development,” says director Annie Sugrue. Members benefit through economies of scale because their input costs are lowered; unhealthy price competition is avoided and training is ongoing. “Our model ensured that people were linked to the land,” says Satgar, adding that the next challenge is to make the shift from subsistence farming to marketing and retail. A growing appetite for organic produce means the community is looking at ways of adding value to their produce by processing into honey, vinegar, jams, sauces, herbs, vegetable and fruit preserves. But this will entail ratcheting up production, which at the moment is running only at slightly above subsistence levels. “Entrepreneurs are not born,” says Satgar. Ivory Park’s local economy has few skills to kickstart development. When the co-ops were started, training was a crucial element and remains so. Land systems had to be changed to allow for co-operative ownership and transfer of leases took two years in some cases, speeded up with the creation of the Johannesburg Property Company (JPC), a public/private partnership established to manage the land belonging to the City of Johannesburg. Ultimately, co-ops should be a key means of ensuring food security, a vital element of sustainable development. But this would also depend on accessing start-up capital. While eight women have been trained to run bakeries, they lack the finance to start their own business. On the other hand, the principles and skills of this form of ownership are spreading. A group of people have pooled start-up capital of R500 and registered their own co-op. In fact all the small business that started as a result of the work of the EcoCity Trust have chosen to establish themselves as co-operatives. This creates a feeling of cohesion and solidarity in the community. Satgar says the challenge now is to augment skills by introducing leadership training and problem-solving methods, and to encourage cross-pollination across the co-ops. “We need to look at things like getting the paper-making co-op to supply veggie boxes and the Shova Lula Bicycle Co-operative to encourage local entrepreneurship through the use of bikes.” Deeper philosophical interrogation is also needed. “We have to ask whether we've integrated this economic model with the township economy, or whether we have set up individual projects.”