Mushroom farming utilizes agricultural waste products to grow nutritious food and medicines for our communities reducing the impacts on landfill and recycling organic material back into ecosystems. However starting a farm requires a significant amount of start-up capital, which is cost prohibitive to most people. Cooperative business model offers a way for those looking to start a farm a way to spread the costs and benefits among the stakeholders of the business. Co-ops help keep money cycling within a community and help spread the wealth throughout them instead concentrating in the hands of a few people. There are also many other resources that the cooperative model can be applied to. This class will cover cooperative business in the context of mushroom farming, other community resources like land trusts or solar panel co-ops, and a general introduction to cooperative businesses.