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  • From: "Robert Waldrop" <bwaldrop@cox.net>
  • To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] SSE again
  • Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:10:33 -0600

If a person sets up a non-profit, it's important to set it up so it can't be hijacked. The Oklahoma Food Coop isn't a non-profit, it's cooperative, but when I wrote our Articles of Incorporation, I included this paragraph:

(4) (c) No person, persons, or other legal entity may own or vote more than one membership share in the cooperative; however, any person may give money to the cooperative to pay for shares of stock for low income persons who desire to be cooperative members but who do not have sufficient funds to pay for the membership. Shares may not be transferred directly from members to non-members or between members.

And the article on amending the Articles says:

Provided, however, that section 4 (c) above, (limiting ownership of shares of membership stock to one per membership), is neither amendable nor repealable.

Other protections include:

+ Amendments to the Articles of Incorporation can only be made by members at a membership meeting. Written notice of amendments has to be given to all members 25 days in advance of such a meeting.

+ The cooperative may issue only one class of stock.

+ The voting rights of all members are equal.

What this means is that nobody can start buying up member shares, because you can't do anything with a member share except sell it back to us. No one person or entity can own or vote more than one share, so we have no proxy voting.

It's not perfect, but it would make a takeover very hard. If the board went crazy, members can of their own initiative call a special meeting of the membership to reverse or change anything the board does.

Bob Waldrop, Oklahoma City
www.oklahomafood.coop



----- Original Message ----- From: <lbsaltzman@aol.com>
To: <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2008 1:37 PM
Subject: Re: [permaculture] SSE again


The middle ground here is that we should all do what we can to conserve and even breed seeds locally, but as Marshall suggests we don't want to loose the thousands of years of seed?breeding by farmers all over the world. Organizations like SSE are irreplacable in the near future.? If somebody has the time and resources to duplicate elsewhere what they have acheived that would be a good thing, but an extremely hard thing.? So work to get the bad guys kicked out and restore the good guys.

And if you ever start a non-profit learn from this. Never, never let outsiders in you don't know and give them the chance to steal and subvert the organization.


-----Original Message-----
From: Marshall Chrostowski <mcfarm@silcom.com>
To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 11:14 am
Subject: [permaculture] SSE again



Jay, yes this is a flawed world and a world filled with well-meaning people
rushing about doing good works. Most anyone can learn to save seed and acquire
the means of growing, selecting, protecting, harvesting, processing and storing
seed -- year after year after year after year. How many of us have the time,
opportunity and perserverence to conserve unique, mostly annual plant materials
over many years? The reality is closer to the situation where relatively few
people grow a relatively small roster of seed types more or less readily
available.

I now get that you really don't understand the SSE's role and functioning in
conservation of heirloom and traditional varieties. The single organization
works closely with similar organization in country and abroad as well as
national governments. Yes, there is a large number of seed stored at Heritage
Farm but samples of many of these have been donated from other holders of same
seeds and many others have been distributed to listed members who grow them out
and conserve them. Other varieties have been introduced into the commercial seed
trade. This is a dynamic and living conservation effort. Yes, it would be
cheaper to deep freeze germplasm to available for future plant breeding. Is this
to be the end result of 10,000 years of crop selection by farmers and
horticulturists from many parts of the world?

Marshall

Message: 9
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 05:20:20 -0600
From: Jay Woods <woodsjay@cox.net>
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Seed Savers Exchange
To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Message-ID: <200801210520.20694.woodsjay@cox.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

So what do we do to become trained and equipped. In this flawed world, to
depend on a single organization at a single spot is folly.

On Monday 21 January 2008 12:19:51 am Marshall Chrostowski wrote:

3. SSE practices living conservation of genetic resources with a
rigorous program of rotating growouts. The USDA and other governmental
agencies have been expanding germplasm banks held at very low
temperatures. It was been SSE's experience that such germplasm storage
systems do not protect living matter for advertised durations.


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