Invest in Native Foods (through a cooperative!)

I just invested in a sustainable native food farm. It is a bithinga farm. Bithinga is the Dharawal word for Oyster. This 'Sydney Rock' Oyster (Saccostrea glomerata) farm is based on Dharawal / Yuin Country. 

The farm is run by the Oyster Life company. I invested through a cooperative called Invest in Your Farmer Cooperative (IIF Coop for short). See my dashboard below. I hope to invest in more regenerative farms, particularly native food farms. 

As far as I can tell, these farmers don't directly share benefits with the local First Nations community. I believe they should as they are farming a native food on native waters. I work at Native Foodways and our whole reason for being is to ensure First Nations communities, farmers, and foodmakers benefit from the native food system. 

I will donate 10% of any earnings I make off the investment to Waminda (a First Nations-led, women-led, health and wellbeing organisation based on the South Coast of NSW). 

I would like to donate more to the local First Nations community as I think they should be benefiting from at least 5% of the sale price of the oysters (would be about $0.50 per dozen). Which would be higher than 10% of the yield price on an investment in the Oysters (would be about $0.07 per dozen [if my maths is correct]).

However, to make this financially viable, I can't donate more just yet. I'm using debt to finance this investment. This means I'm paying 6%+ interest on borrowed money and then investing it in a potential 10% yield. There is only about a 4% net return if everything goes well. But there are fees (1%) and risks involved. The oysters might sell for less and any yield can easily be wiped out. To make all this worth the risk, at this stage, the very beginning, I need to leave a buffer for potential failing crops and losses. Otherwise, I can't make the case to invest our family's money in this regenerative and meaningful investment that we really want to support but also have to be careful with our finances (we have a significant mortgage). 

If you're interested in joining a cooperative and supporting regenerative farmers and First Nations communities, check out the Invest in Your Farmer Coop. 

I'll be writing more about cooperatives as I explore their potential as a vehicle for community collaboration for the purpose of meeting community needs and generating wellbeing for all.