Welcome back to the Port Prolls Almanac. Today we're joined by Chris Patton, the founder of the Midwest Elderberry Cooperative.

The Midwest Elderberry Cooperative has 31 paid members and has a managed network of over

160 elderberry growers throughout the United States. With a background in marketing,

engineering, and public relations, Chris has worked to make the American elderberry as popular as the European

elderberry and more. We talk about cooperative structures, how a cooperative actually works,

when it's the best solution for farmers, and how it can be a place of radical organizing.

I'm really excited to see what happens with this organization and how they can show what a new food system could look like.

So take a listen. Let us know what you think.

Chris, thanks so much for joining us. Can you tell us a little bit about the origins of your organization, the Midwest Elderberry Cooperative?

Well, back in 2011, I attended what was then called the Moses Conference, the end of February.

And it's one of the largest organic agricultural conferences held in lacrosse, Wisconsin,

every year by the Midwest Sustainable Agriculture Society

Organization.

They've changed their name to Marble Seat now if you want to search for it.

But they have a big conference every year, and they bring speakers from New England, from

the West Coast, although mostly from the Midwest.

And at the time, I was looking to buy some land and grow my own food because

I didn't trust the stock market and I didn't have a lot of savings anyway. I could buy a

use truck with what I had saved. And I figured, okay, I'm going to need to try to do some things

and my oldest son was interested in that way and so that's what I was

looking to do and I'd taken some classes and then started that was a little inefficient so I started

going to these conferences and at the conference I heard dairy Durham who was a long time organic farmer

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