The Treeherder cooperative model

There are a variety of cooperatives in the world ranging from large football clubs, agricultural companies, and banks down to small vegetable and artistic cooperatives. One thing which defines all of them is an economic relationship between the members and the cooperative company. In New Zealand, we are most familiar with producer cooperatives, particularly farmer cooperatives in which farmers band to together to process and sell their products at scale through a cooperative company.

Treeherder will be a bit different. It will be a consumer cooperative. In a consumer cooperative individuals buy products from the cooperative company.

If we fast forward to say, 60 – 70 years from now, each year members will be given an allocation of the harvested timber based on the shares they hold. Members can then to choose to take that timber themselves (Treeherder can arrange transport and milling), alternatively members who don’t desire timber can opt to have Treeherder sell the surplus timber on their behalf (on the open market or to another member) thereby receiving a financial return.

In order to maintain a membership you must buy something from the cooperative each year, at a minimum this maybe a few dollars to get an access pass to the forest. Prior to the flow of harvested timber manifesting we will be producing a range of smaller forest products for sale to our members (at cost): everything from bush honey, bush craft courses, native seeds, forest mushrooms, to green wood billets (for spoon carving).

Meanwhile, as the trees in the Treeherder forest grow so does the value of each member’s share in Treeherder. We will be using a bit of maths to ensure the rate of return is equalised between pre-harvest and harvest scenarios. As a result, members won’t have to wait until harvest to reap a financial return.