The COOP – Fat Pig Society

ABOUT The COOP

Why Are We Organized as a cooperative?

We are a workers cooperative out of Fort Collins, CO who has produced all our product with volunteers who received CBD for their efforts. It is truly a labor of love and the coming together of community in order to bring this ancient medicine to you. We grow our organic crop outdoors in the Colorado sunshine, process and package all on site, and offer a line of clean, pure, powerful organic CBD products. We are committed to the seven principles of cooperatives which are: Voluntary, Open Ownership, Autonomy And Independence, Education, Training And Information, Cooperation Among Cooperatives, and Concern For The Community, Our model of distribution from us to you, farm to table,

allows us to offer our CBD for the cheapest price in town and rewards the farmer with 80 cents of every dollar instead of only 5 cents for every dollar.

This model eliminates the broker, the middle man, stockholders, middle and upper management. Our mission is to find crops that organic farmers can make more revenue with and lower the price of CBD so that more people can use it. We want to mentor a new generation of organic farmers who wants to take over, the average farmer is 62 years old. This would enable small organic farms to survive and adopt ways that will regenerate soil, restore habitat, save water, produce food and medicine and sequester carbon.

ABOUT THE FAT PIG SOCIETY

WHY VERTICALLY INTEGRATED?

The vertically integrated model would include: clones, growing, preserving, extracting, and retailing operations. CBD, which is mostly sold online, represents a $22B industry in the next few years. This would allow farmers a direct relationship with consumers (in the food hub, “farm to table” model), benefitting both.

WHY A COOPERATIVE?

Only a farmer can protect a farmer from getting exploited. Through the cooperative model, farmers can secure this level of income and benefit for themselves. We are kick starting this project by allowing up to 20 farmers to get started growing with Fat Pig Society in 2022. The revenues from 2022’s harvest (goal of $100K per farmer, $1Million in retail sales) would allow for the seed capital to create their own independent producer’s cooperative in 2023.

STATUS

We have innovated and are operating the model of the complete Certified Organic Hemp CBD vertically integrated supply chain and are ready to donate our knowledge and Intellectual Property to the cooperative once it forms officially. It includes genetics, cultivation, extraction, and handling. The Cooperative Development Center at Rocky Mountain Farmers Union will oversee the cooperative’s formation in a third party neutral way once our State hemp regulatory plan is approved by the USDA.

OUR TACTIC

“THE FAT PIG” AND "FREE HEMP”

The Founders, Bill Althouse, Iginia Boccalandro, and members John Long, Yamie Lucero and along with 100s of volunteer community members, through Fat Pig Society, have helped create a two acre, $1Million retail revenue micro “demonstration” operation of the proposed coop model in Fort Collins.

Why fat pig? Because when our founders reached out to small organic farmers offering the same opportunity seven years ago, nobody was willing to come to the table, out of fear over hemp’s regulation. We knew we could radically help farmers, but they did not want us to help. Bill then told a story to our founders about trying to help a pig farmer in Micronesia who did not want help. After a 6 month long process of doing all the pig farmers work, which was hunting and gathering pig food from the jungle by hand, he finally got the farmers trust and permission to change the feed for one pig.

This pig was kept separate and near another pig from the same litter using the farmers original feed. Six months later the farmers pig was still under 75lbs but Bill’s was over 250lbs. One day the farmer, comparing the two pigs, said “Wow, that’s a fat pig”. Now, finally, he was excited to have help. Our founders decided we also needed a very Fat Pig to prove to farmers the potential of CBD hemp. The Fat Pig Society was born

The founders of Fat Pig are most proud that the development of our Fat Pig model was done without capital and was focused on giving away free CBD to everyone who helped us. Most of all our labor was from volunteers getting free CBD oil for their help, making human capital the major source of financing. Everyone who helped us got all their CBD for free and the high prices of CBD from other sources brought 100s of volunteers to our mission. The Free Hemp brought us other supporters like our bookkeeper, our dentist and mechanics to keep us moving. Then people who were not close enough to help us directly started asking how they can get free CBD. We then developed our Agents of Change network that gave free CBD to those who help us distribute around the country. Now those people who sell our CBD to get theirs free are sending us over a hundred thousand dollars a year. As unbelievable as it sounds, we created a very Fat Pig in a matriarchal approach that says “who gives away more wins”, instead of the patriarchal “who gets more wins.” We proved that basing an enterprise on a Gifting model is actually possible. We also give away a lot of CBD to anyone who is unable to help us and cannot afford it.