Food Co-ops, 50 Years

Today is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, but 1970 was also the beginning of the second wave of food co-ops in Minnesota.

Earlier this month, the City Pages ran an article by Craig Upright, a sociology professor at Winona State, on the early history of our local food co-ops. Craig's dissertation was about the co-ops and this is a glimpse of that work, which I assume is at least partially being transformed into his soon-to-be-published book Grocery Activism: The Radical History of Food Cooperatives in Minnesota.

I'm looking forward to the book, and will put it on the shelf with Craig Cox's Storefront Revolution and my copy of Seward Co-op's 40th anniversary history.


March 1972 photo by Mary Lee Shettehaughe/Minnesota Daily. Taken at Saint Anthony Park Foods, then on Cleveland Avenue at Buford Avenue, next to the Saint Paul campus of the University of Minnesota.