Membership

FLIC is a cooperative, which operates on the principle of “one member, one vote.” When you buy a membership share of $250, you are entitled to a vote in the cooperative. It is a one-time purchase that lasts as long as FLIC lasts, or until you terminate your membership for whatever reason–there aren’t annual dues.

Members will meet as a group at least annually to make collective decisions about the direction that FLIC is going, including electing board members, who will oversee day-to-day and month-to-month operations.

Members will also have the opportunity to invest further in FLIC when the board makes a call for investment shares, valued at $500 each. Those investment shares will be accounted for as yours, and will be used to make land purchases. That means that your investment shares are not liquid: you will probably have to wait until the land that FLIC buys is transferred to farmer-ownership to get that money back. So, investment shares are a great way to put your money to work for years at a time in a way that you have some say over via your membership in FLIC.

One thing that membership doesn’t mean is that you will be entitled to land access on FLIC property. You might get to make a rental or purchase agreement with FLIC, but that is separate from your investment in FLIC.

Yes, a membership is required in order to purchase investment shares.

No. There is no pressure to purchase investment shares, though members have the opportunity to do so.

Yes, though each membership will only have one individual’s name attached to it. If you want to share a membership with your spouse, for example, the two of you will get one vote and just one of you will be listed as a member.

There is a separate class of stocks for businesses and nonprofits that want the opportunity to invest in the cooperative. The organizers decided that only individual humans can have voting rights, but businesses and nonprofits can invest in FLIC as non-voting members. The membership share for businesses and nonprofits is also $250.

The Farmer’s Land Investment Cooperative and the Sustainable Iowa Land Trust are two different tools that are trying to solve a similar problem. We are not in competition: sometimes you need a screwdriver and sometimes you need a wrench, and it’s good to have both in your toolbox!

SILT is a statewide nonprofit that operates by having landowners donate farms, or easements on farms. Then SILT finds farmers to grow food on the farms that are donated, and monitors the farming practices on the farms with SILT easements on them. SILT creates an opportunity for landowners to leave a legacy of food farming in their communities, and creates more affordable, and long-term, land access for farmers growing food. Great stuff!

FLIC is a locally-based cooperative that operates by having community members invest in farmland. Once a farm is acquired with that community investment, FLIC will find tenants to farm it in the short term, and will arrange for farmers (perhaps those same tenants) to buy the land from FLIC, likely through a contract for deed. So, FLIC creates an opportunity for community members to make an impact on how land is used in our local community, and creates more affordable, and long-term, land access opportunities for farmers.

The inspiration for FLIC was the Hidden Falls Land LLC, which was a group of people who collectively bought 22 acres of raw row crop land in 2014. Humble Hands Harvest started farming the HFL LLC land in 2017, and finished a purchase of the property, buying out members share by share, in 2022.

Through FLIC we are hoping to replicate that kind of work, and we are organized as a cooperative largely because we want to participate in the cooperative movement. Another example that we have been following is the Northeast Investment Cooperative, which invests in urban real estate in Minneapolis.

FLIC is most likely to purchase raw farmland, but there are also situations where FLIC could consider purchasing a farmstead. We are interested in properties that have agricultural business potential, are located near supportive neighbors, and have potential to be made more regenerative, as well as more accessible to farmers, through our work. FLIC is not going to compete with sustainable farmers who are in a position to buy land themselves; rather, FLIC might come in to bridge the gap between a farmer’s current capacity to pay and the price of the land.

As we build the membership of FLIC, we will host discussions about the types of projects that we want to invest in as a group, and once that happens, this answer will become more specific!

FLIC is aiming to support farmers in converting more acres to regenerative agriculture: planting perennial crops, grazing livestock, building soil and sequestering carbon. Any farmer who has a lease or purchase contract with FLIC will need to show a business plan for how they will pay their obligations to FLIC. It may happen, as it did with the Hidden Falls Land LLC, that for a few years, there will be a tenant farmer who plants the land to hay or even an organic row crop, before a transition to long-term farmer stewards.

It is worth noting that FLIC is not legally allowed to engage in the work of farming itself: separate individuals and business entities will be the ones managing farm operations on FLIC land.