Oma Maa food coop
Oma Maa is a food co-operative based on community-supported agriculture (CSA) as well as ecologically and socially sustainable food production methods. Together as a community, we produce a large variety of products at the Lassila family farm in Tuusula, about 30 km from Helsinki. We are looking to grow into a community that can sustain 200 food members in total.
Oma maa is an invitation on board of an all-year-round ecological community process around Good Agriculture. Here agriculture refers to the cultivating and developing of the land to full fill people’s need for food as well as other basic needs, and to make good, ecological life possible.
Community-supported agriculture (CSA)
Oma Maa works according to Community Agriculture principles, according to which the line between a producer and a consumer is deliberately faded. The co-operative partnership offers the producing members a steady market to deliver their produce to while eliminating food waste. The food members get a steady stream of local organic produce. Besides the benefits, both member groups also share the risks of the production, e.g. poor harvest due to cold summer, as is natural in a mutual partnership.
The partnership goes further then that.
An open operating model based on democratic decision-making is the basis of cooperative management. So also for Oma maa : Everyone can take part in making decisions about how and for what the commonly owned means of production are used.
Also, food members are actively encouraged to participate in the co-op activities through several types of communal work. Members can co-work at the farm during the week and weekends, organize the weekly food distribution at our café in Kallio, or join one of our working groups.
Our aim is to develop this mutually enriching model further so that the producing and food members work as much as possible together in peer to peer pedagogical learning processes .
The daily operational costs and risks can be kept minimal for a single member with the help of a large group of co-operative members. The 200 euro production shares which give a guarantee to a part of the produce, can be compared to building blocks used to build our commonly agreed upon future.
Ecological food production
Our production is certified organic and local. The production and the produce are seasonal. The biomass and energy streams of production are developed to become more and more circular and local to the farm so as to avoid dependency on natural resources needed elsewhere. Oma Maa’s production model has been frequently referred to for its diversity in produce.
Our partnership with the Lassila farm enables us to develop a production system where the means of production are communally owned, where the food is organic and local, and supports an ecological food culture and which can serve as model on how to implement extensive changes in food production systems.
