This co-owned mushroom farm is providing a new business model for farmers

The conventional business model of a farm usually involves a family or a single person owning a farm and hiring people to work the farm. This may have worked in the past, but research within the agriculture industry shows this may not deliver the best outcome nowadays for both the owners and the people involved. On the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, a youth-owned mushroom farm by the name of Plant Grow Eat is showing a new way forward for farms.

The business model at Plant Grow Eat is a take on the worker cooperative model but is more didactic in its early stages. Basically, the land and initial capital injection are provided by an investor to a group of young entrepreneurs. The investor, Peter Dillon, whose Ph.D. studies were focused on the implementation of similar projects, also trains the youth running it on…
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