Some Notes on the Decomposition of Ownership

These thoughts came out of several conversations about possibly changing the ownership structure of the Intervale Comunnity Farm, the local CSA that I have been a member of for over a decade. They are “in progress” so comments are especially welcome.

We have talked a lot about ownership as we think about moving to a Co-op model - either a worker or consumer co-op, as a lot of the motivation for the discussion is to provide current CSA members with a ownership structure that more accurately reflects the feeling that “We own the Farm.” Another motivation has been making sure our Farmers are well taken care of, in terms of job satisfaction, current wages, and future retirement, in return for the tremendous amount of work they put into making the farm a success. And as different people meant different things when they were talking about ownership, it became clear that ownership is not a monolithic thing, and that in order to look intelligently at what we wanted to do, the concept should be dissected a bit.

Ownership as Functional Control

Ownership as Receiving Return on Capital

Ownership as Control of Assets

Ownership as Accepting Risk

Ownership as Responsibility