Minnesota Food Cooperative Wars

The Minnesota Food Cooperative Wars took place in 1975-1976 and revolved around the many food cooperatives in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota. Initially, the disputes and confrontations within the Twin Cities Cooperative movement were not referred to as "Wars", but the nomenclature developed in part as a result of the title of a documentary made decades later.

Despite the usage of the term "coop", most Twin Cities coops were not organized as consumer or producer cooperatives. Some were worker collectives and others were non-profit organizations. The local counter-culture food cooperative movement was started in 1970 by The People's Pantry, an establishment in the Cedar-Riverside People's Center that aimed to provide bulk-supplied "natural" foods to the surrounding community at wholesale prices. Coop Organization or CO expanded because their focus on centralized distribution and revolutionary political organizing appealed to leftist co-op workers who were frustrated with the marijuana smoking and casual attitude of their fellow counter-culture co-op workers. In 1975, polarization amongst different types of co-operatives led to vigorous competition, violent altercations, and the territorial seizure of some co-ops. The conflict began to fade out for various reasons during the summer of the following year.

Initial goals of cooperatives

Many of the early counter-culture co-operatives had hopes of being able to offer a natural and inexpensive alternative to the grocery industry in a community-centered farmers' market economy. The members of various cooperatives also hoped to have the ability to feed most, if not all, of the Twin Cities region with their collective resources.