As my son, Jeremy, recently wrote in his 3D printing blog, amazing things happen as the result of sharing resources and cooperation. I have come to believe that the vast challenges to our food supply and consequently our health cannot be resolved by a cafe here or a business there or by government intervention. These issues can only be addressed effectively through cooperation and sharing among like-minded individuals and organizations at every level of the food supply chain.

Until the recent economic downturn, I was privileged not to have to worry about the grocery bills from week to week.  I was able to raise a family on mostly organic food, for a period of time from my own garden. I was also blessed in being a stay-at-home mom during my kids’ early years. This meant I could take the time to read about health, search for good recipes and, most importantly, make all of our meals at home from whole foods. I was able to maintain the illusion that in my efforts, I was independent.

Now I work many hours, like so many folks out there.  I have learned how difficult and exhausting it can be having to worry about pennies and dimes.  I have learned how challenging it can be to work long hours and still try to plan a healthy menu of home-cooked meals, to shop for them and to cook them. And purchasing those beautiful organic and specialty items I was no longer able to grow or gather? Forget it! Here too were lessons about the importance of cooperation and a reminder that when it comes to food, independence is indeed an illusion.

Still, I had the advantage of what I learned during those years  when I was a stay-at-home mom, planting and caring for my large organic garden and experimenting with cooking until I found things I loved to eat that were usually easy to make. To the extent those meals were vegetarian, they were usually comparatively economical even when opting for high quality ingredients over cheaper processed items.

When I ended up in the restaurant business, I thought I would like to share what I had learned with others. I wanted to make the same healthy, economical foods in my cafe that I learned to make at home. I assumed that since I am vegetarian, and my cafe would be vegetarian, it would be easy to keep food costs down, and I would be able to make a small but sufficient living. I could just cook from scratch from whole foods as I had done at home and serve it up to people, no problem. Right.

Anyone who has ever been in or had anything to do with the food business probably knows how naive that thought was. The food business is difficult under any circumstances, more difficult for someone with no business background or background in the food industry — and in today’s world, there are special challenges to doing what I want to do.

I want to prepare and serve delicious food, wholesome food, food prepared from scratch with love and with minimal and highly selective use of those ingredients that are a product of food factories. I would like to do that in a way that will make the food affordable for my customers. Good food, whole food made from scratch that is low-cost? At some distance from major cities? An oxymoron, perhaps?

Here are the special challenges of running a cafe featuring unprocessed vegetarian foods at some distance from a major city:

• Not as many products are available locally as are available closer to the city.
• Vendors don’t deliver to smaller operations at a distance from urban centers.
• Preparing all fresh food from produce is labor-intensive. I hoped to do it myself. I can’t. Imagine cooking for a party of 60 or more people every day — and doing it as the guests are arriving!

It costs a lot to run a food business, even a vegetarian cafe featuring unprocessed foods, perhaps especially a vegetarian cafe featuring unprocessed foods. Processed items are a ubiquitous part of our nationwide food supply chain. Being off the beaten track either geographically or conceptually costs. We struggle to make ends meet, especially during the long, cold Midwestern winters. So I should raise my prices, right? But then I can’t fulfill my commitment to produce affordable wholesome food for my customers.

It has occurred to me recently that many food solutions currently out there are solutions only for the wealthy: organic foods, small specialty food operations like mine. Recently I saw an organic food delivery business – great idea for those who can afford it. I saw an indoor aeroponics system, another great idea for year-round home-growing for seed-to-table foods. Also costly.

And yet one out of every five children in this country is living in poverty. People in the Delta region of this country have a 10 year lower life expectancy than the rest of us, and one of the biggest factors in that is lack of access to wholesome food.

A couple of months ago, I was privileged to host a movie called Food for Change, a film that explores the development of the cooperative movement in the United States with a focus on food. It’s hard to describe the impact this film had on me the two times I viewed it. It portrays a world I want to live in, a world based on cooperation more than self-interest.

As the movie unfolded, I recognized it as a giant step toward resolving our food supply problem. A food cooperative is a system where each participant is an important part of the whole, and each participant both benefits and contributes. There is an understanding that each must benefit, each must have a sustainable position in the overall economy of the cooperative. This kind of cooperation is locally based so presents an effective model for areas that are remote from large cities. The principle of local cooperation celebrates our food interdependence from seed to table.

The movie was shown as part of a membership drive for the Food Shed. I am very excited about this effort and see it as a way to make wholesome food available and affordable to everyone in this country.

As my son said in his 3D printing blog, amazing things happen when people cooperate!