Something wonderfully old-fashioned happened to me recently – something one hopes could be a seed of the kind of investing that might one day become (dare I say it?) the norm. It represents a return to sanity, to treating investing as productive, rather than as speculative and extractive.
What happened is I got a dividend check in the mail. (A good old-fashioned check, not an electronic deposit, for I am a determined Luddite). It was a dividend payment from Organic Valley, the $1 billion farmer-owned cooperative – a dairy marketing company – delivering the annual return on the preferred stock investment my wife and I made quite a few years ago. It was a four percent dividend – not a frothy, unstable, stock market equity high, but a decent, stable return on a different kind of equity. Allow me to go on and on about the many things that are wonderful about this.
First, my wife and I have an actual, real, human relationship with an actual company – one that I’ve visited in Wisconsin, that I’ve studied over the years, and that I admire. I buy their butter and cheese and soy milk whenever I can.
Second, we made an actual investment in this company. That is, we sent them money, and that money reached the company. They put it to use to fund operations, support their balance sheet, manage inventory, and handle cash flow. It’s what I like to call a productive investment – rather than a speculative investment. Real money reached a real company for real, productive uses. You won’t find your investment adviser talking about this distinction, because the so-called investment field doesn’t recognize it. Stock market investments are more than 99 percent speculative. When you invest in IBM, that money doesn’t reach IBM; it simply goes from one speculator to another. IBM hasn’t done an offering of new stock since 1989, more than 35 years ago. Impact investments, by contrast, tend to be productive: that’s the reason these investments should stop being seen as the fringe and become the new norm.
Third, what we invested in was a democratically owned company – a firm that represents what all companies should become one day. It’s owned by the people who make a productive contribution to the company: the 1,600 organic family farmers whose farms produce the milk, cheese and eggs marketed by this cooperative. Investing in this company is an example of “ownership lens investing,” an emerging movement among impact investors to support broad-based ownership.
Fourth, when this company declares a successful period – as it did recently – it includes not only financial metrics (like the four percent increase in net sales through June 2025), but also the ability to pay farmers more for their products. That payment (the “pay price”) was also reported to have increased in the same period – a success shared near the top of the financial statements my wife and I received in August. Paying farmers a fair price is the purpose of the company, the reason it was founded by seven farmers back in 1988 – along with a second founding purpose: to raise food the right way, organically, without GMOs, synthetic hormones, antibiotics or toxic pesticides. As the company says, “We only use sun, grass, soil and rain.”
Fifth, this company’s success is showing one way to help save the family farm: farmers joining together to protect themselves through owning the company that purchases and markets their products. Since 1960, large corporations have taken over more than 600,000 family-owned farms. And as investors hope to see a rising share price from those big-ag firms, the higher profits required means the productive folks – like farmers and employees – get squeezed: they produce more and get paid less. Many farmers are forced to sell farms that have been in the family for generations. Organic Valley shows another way. Its 1,600 farmer owners represent a start – but the model, I think, is far more powerful. Right here, right now, in the midst of our capitalist system, this company is holding its own. And it’s not aiming to grow huge and cash out. It’s proudly independent and not for sale.
Sixth – and finally – Organic Valley flips the power structure of business on its head. Farmers are at the top; they elect the board. The CEO reports to those farmers. And investors take their proper place: providing productive capital (through preferred shares, not common shares) and receiving a reasonable return but not having control. Maximizing gains for investors is not the purpose of this company. Preferred shares do not increase in price. If you invest at, say, $10 a share, then sell the shares a decade later, they’re still worth $10 a share. Returns come as dividends, paid at the discretion of the company. Preferred shareholders have limited voting rights; farmers retain control. Now isn’t that a different world?
By the way, preferred shares in Organic Valley are not currently open for sale. That’s the thing about productive investments; when a company gets the actual capital it needs, it stops selling shares. The sales at Organic Valley do open periodically; check their website.
As for how shares are redeemed, this happens on a rolling basis. Shareholders make a request, which the board approves during regular meetings. This board discretion is so that the company doesn’t have too large an outflow at one time. In reality, few investors seem interested in turning in their shares. Dorigen Hofmann, partner at Clean Yield Asset Management in Vermont, told me that they have dozens of clients like me who hold these shares, and very few have ever chosen to redeem them – perhaps three or four total since 2008.
On a side note, I happen to have stumbled on another investment I asked Clean Yield to invest in for us: preferred shares in CHS Inc. – a large agricultural cooperative of cooperatives, with $39 billion in 2024 revenue, a dividend yield of 8 percent, and shares traded on NASDAQ. Its products are not organic, though the company is owned and controlled by farmers – offering an interesting example of how investors can enjoy liquidity, without the company giving up control by farmers.
Going on and on about the little check I got in the mail from Organic Valley, I know this sounds like a press release. Or like the rantings of a dreamer, which I suppose I am, at least a little bit. I wrote about Organic Valley and my visit there in Owning Our Future, a book I published in 2012, when I was still in full-blown optimist mode. That side of me is getting beaten up pretty badly lately. My optimism is close to gone now, though this company is still here. I share this story just because it feels good to do so, and maybe some of us can learn from it. Also because it’s real. It’s a true story.
Marjorie Kelly is a distinguished senior fellow at The Democracy Collaborative, author most recently of Wealth Supremacy: How the Extractive Economy and the Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today’s Crises.
Guest posts on ImpactAlpha represent the opinions of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of ImpactAlpha.
