ALISON KNIGHT

The Ohio Healthy Food Cooperative is a farmers’ association, a farmers’ cooperative. Our mission is to clean up the environment, clean up our food supply, clean up our economy where 320 Ohio communities are classified as low-income Opportunity Zone neighborhoods needing redevelopment. Unfortunately, this mission is not a low-budget program.

​

The 2012 Jumpstart Our Business JOBS Act was supposed to facilitate small business startups. For a large capital base, it is impossible to utilize regulations that limit capital to $1,000,000 and $2,000 per investor. SEC regulations prevent us from making solicitations not rigidly formatted to protect naïve investors. 

​

The ideal basis of cooperative funding is “Peer to Peer” where the membership can provide among themselves, the capital needed to launch the program. A group of members large enough to possess a 20% equity or $56 million appears to be impossible to establish with the crowdfunding limits established by the SEC.

 

The Ohio Healthy Food Cooperative wishes to interest ordinary people in joining our cooperative using our application form, which, if an applicant was interested, would become a job app document setting up the opportunity to be evaluated as a prospective worker-member. 

 

Non-Participating Membership: A category of membership that creates a non-voting, non-distribution membership that provides a membership card with an official number assigned. The N.P. membership requires a pledge or payment of $20 upon registering the application with our Human Resources Membership Program. The application form provides confidential employment data, that if the applicant chooses, will become the official enrolment form for hiring at such time as the cooperative is recruiting worker-members.  The 5-year membership pledge is fully redeemed by OHFC on maturity with a bonus of ten dollars for a payout of $30. NP membership can be renewed at no cost at that time. In addition, the NP $20 pledge membership provides benefits such as discounts on food boxes, coupons for redemption in the OHFC Veggie Cafe and Juice Bars, and an occasional free veggie basket.

​

Any person wishing to join the cooperative capitalist movement may donate $20 as a social investment. It is valuable to know that this gift provides a small contribution to the war on carbon (CH4 & CO2) and builds a start to finish local food chain. Such a donation when combined with others expands the social capital to make programs like the Ohio Opportunity Zone work. The membership card entitles the owner to discounts on merchandise. Such pledges may be made using Pay Pal etc.

​

Opportunity Zones in Ohio

​

Opportunity Zones are defined as communities with a large percentage of low-income residents and have been set up to meet Federal IRS criteria. Generally speaking, urban sites predominate the lists. Rural sites provide great opportunity for large OHFC Biogas Facilities, while urban sites favor aggregation, secondary processing, job training, and consumer outlets, with biomass heated greenhouses using OHFC electricity.

​

The 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act sets up a mechanism to avoid capital gains taxes by means of term investments in projects located in depressed areas of Ohio, both rural and urban. The 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act was essentially designed to create jobs and economic opportunity in specific geographic areas where long-term poverty and unemployment have existed historically. OHFC and its’ Biogas Project can provide good jobs that will be permanent and well paid. These are not make-work projects, they are permanent viable local businesses that improve communities and through the use of the OHFC Reinvestment Plan, increase social capital investment otherwise not available.

 

The OHFC Project funding through Opportunity Zone Investors is intended to leverage a 20% or 30% capital base provided by OZ Investors with a loan from Farm Credit Services or COBANK, underwritten with an 80% loan guarantee by the USDA.

​

Therefore, we are limited on this website page to outlining the basic format of our Plan without representing the information as a solicitation of any kind; it being an outline of our basic plan.

 

The OHFC Biogas-Opportunity Zone (OZ)  Project has a high entry cost. 

To illustrate: Gov. Mike DeWine set up a fund to clear Lake Erie Blue-Green algae contamination at a cost of $900,000,000. The OHFC Budget to cover the physical assets and land, plus the operating capital costs for a system at critical mass – capable of generating a profit, is $284-million. Only sophisticated investors, such as any that are Opportunity Zone investors with the capital gains tax benefits represented will be approached for the OZ Project.

 

The caveats are:

1. No one can make a claim of assured success of any venture. 

2. Conditions which no one can accurately predict include, wars, acts of God, fiscal and monetary policy, trade and WTO, exchange rates, and the stock market’s gyrations.

3. Inflation, deflation, and economic factors change rapidly and are unpredictable.

4. OHFC Plan forecasts are based on market data we have researched, and our estimates of costs and revenues as we have calculated them.

 

For general information only:

Only SEC Qualified Opportunity Zone Investors are provided copies of our Business Plan. As sophisticated investors, and having the motivation of capital gains tax mitigation, an investment in Opportunity Zone social entrepreneurial ventures makes great sense, regardless of the poverty in any single OZ site.

 

Profit Sharing – Voting Membership

Farmer-Members Term membership:  All manure supplier farmers are obliged to subscribe to full membership in the cooperative, with the amount of the subscription varying with the amount of raw manure to be supplied. The larger the volume, the greater the subscription. This should alarm no one because the currency with which the subscription is fulfilled is the manure furnished. A credit is applied to the farmer’s account each time a manure pickup is accomplished.

​

Worker-Members: All workers must subscribe with a $250 subscription fee following successful completion of the 90-day probationary period. Annual membership fees of $250 must be paid to maintain membership.