Ian McLean 2011 Green candidate for Tauranga

Cooperation is a basic human behaviour, essential to the survival of the earliest humans. Today, we see it all around us.

Fonterra, NZ's largest listed company, is a cooperative, owned by members who vigorously defend their membership status. Zespri is organised on similar lines, and many point to its cooperative structure as the key solution to the revival of the kiwifruit industry after its collapse in the 1990's.

It is intriguing in this competitive world that some of our most aggressive and successful international companies are organised as cooperatives.

In the simple game 'the prisoner's dilemma”, two people compete for a resource. Reflecting our generally competitive economic structure, winning and losing are defined in terms of gaining or giving up the resource. But the game becomes more interesting when a third option is allowed: sharing.

A mathematician ran the game many times with many players in an attempt to explore the conditions under which cooperation (sharing) might be an effective strategy. He discovered that by applying just a few simple principles, cooperation could deliver the best profits.

First, one player had to be willing to offer to share in a situation where the other might refuse (and take the entire resource). Call this 'taking a punt”.

Second, the players had to be able to identify each other.

Third, there had to be multiple turns – the players must encounter each other regularly.

So, if you offer to share, and the other player can recognise you, and the two of you might exchange goods regularly, then both of you can end up better off. That structure sounds remarkably like a community.

Many successful businesses are built on loyal clients, and may offer special discounts to those clients. These are examples of the prisoner's dilemma game operating in real terms.

The response to the Rena was an enormous exercise in community cooperation.

The successful community garden at Otumoetai is a cooperative whose primary purpose is to build community spirit – fruit and veges are a bonus. Similar ventures are growing in Welcome Bay and Mt Maunganui.

Today, we have 'Plenty”. This is a food-purchasing cooperative designed to deliver low-cost, organic fruit and vegetables to people who don't have the time, inclination or skill to grow their own. 'Plenty” will kick off with a meeting on Saturday 3 March at 4.00 pm (venue not yet decided).

Interested in quality organic food delivered as part of a community venture? RSVP to James Redwood at [email protected].

Ian McLean was the 2011 Green Party candidate for Tauranga.