A report from The Open University and Sustain uses Riverford Organic Farmers as a case study to explore how employee ownership can address the complex challenges facing the food and farming sector. ffinlo Costain spoke to Professor Emma Bell, who said:
Firstly, it’s the question of succession. Farmers are struggling to break even. Many resort to selling up; getting out. The consequences of that are significant for food system resilience. There’s the possibility that farmers will sell to the highest bidder and that results in investors, who are not committed to the land, becoming involved in farm businesses. So we end up with a more and more industrial food and farming system, which is global and not local. Employee ownership offers a model for exploring a different way of structuring ownership of these businesses.
Jobs in the industry are often precarious and insecure: the industry depends on seasonal migrant workers. These jobs are often quite low-skilled and low-paid. We need to find creative ways to improve employment in the sector, which employee ownership does. Partly through building a system of organising that is more participatory, that involves the people who work in the organisation much more actively in its management, and also through the rewards in relation to profit.
There are environmental and social benefits to linked to who owns the business and their interests. It’s very difficult to balance economic and environmental priorities when a business is driven by shareholder capitalism, which drives the demand for return on investment. What we need are businesses that can balance financial reward with social and environmental benefits. It’s not always about making the business as big or as profitable as it can be – it’s about balance.
There’s a structural change and cultural change. Structurally you might look at it initially and think it’s about getting the legal changes in the business in place and about setting up structures. These changes have to be planned and implemented and supported.
But more fundamentally in many senses is the cultural change. Riverford was an entrepreneurial business. It had become quite a large business with over 1000 employees. What they had to do was to communicate the change, to take people with them in that transition and make sure that everyone understood the values of the business.
There was a huge amount of communication and consultation that took place to make that successful. There’s a lot of training and development needed – for example in making sure you move from a directive form of management to a much more participatory and engaged form of management, where people feel that they have a stake in the business and it’s their responsibility to help it improve