Anna Lappe is in South Korea right now. This is the latest posting in her blog:

We Are Wowed by Cooperation

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Saturday, August 23rd, 2008

At an iCoop bakery

My mother likes to tell the story of neuroscientists who studied the state of our brains when we cooperate and when we compete. In one experiment, volunteers engaged in various activities, some that got them cooperating, others competing.

The results were at once surprising and clear: Our minds, they discovered, downright like to cooperate. In fact, the same regions of the brain that light up when we eat chocolate, light up when we cooperate.

If that’s true (and peer-reviewed papers say it is), then this biological fact goes a long way to explain why the group of four leaders in one of South Korea’s powerful consumer cooperatives here smiled so big and laughed so easily with each other during our conversation today.

Founded just over ten years ago, iCoop (Korean Solidarity of Consumers’ Cooperatives) already has 50,000 member households, with 68 regional offices across the country. The cooperative works with 4,500 farmer households who supply more than 1,000 locally and sustainable produced products to members through online sales and at stores across the country. The coop has 34 stores (with 10 more planned this year), including the bustling bakery in a residential neighborhood in Southwest Seoul where we meet (and eat) with them.

The cooperative’s vision is to connect consumers and producers – and in doing so, radically change people’s ideas of what it means to be a “consumer” and a “producer.”

Part of this re-education happens in their annual farm visits, they explained to us through our indefatigable interpreter.

“Consumers are always trying to buy as cheap as possible. Producers are always trying to sell for as much as possible,” said Oh Hang Sik, iCoop General Secretary.

Through their farm visits and education programs (last year, they brought 8,500 of their members to visit their farmers), the cooperative helps people to rethink these relationships: “Both consumer and producer realize that they share a common vision of sustainable agriculture that can provide safe food and a secure future,” explains Oh Hang Sik.

Added Lee Jeong Joo, a member activist and the president of their 68 regional offices: “We like to say: Ethical production through ethical consumption.” Each makes the other possible.

“We help our members have a shift in consciousness that sustainable agriculture is linked to our food sovereignty. This shift in consciousness is an important role of iCoop.” They see how consumers and producers can cooperate with each other to work toward this vision. In other words, they eat the chocolate.