Development & Community › Roadmap & Further Development › Strategy and Planning · 15 min read · Decided – this is how it will be
We are building a shared infrastructure for community-supported food networks across Europe.
Different structures take on different tasks and can evolve within the network:
TEIKEI connects communities, regional food networks, and partner businesses. It supports relationship-building, knowledge exchange, and collaboration between independent regions.
Farms and small agricultural businesses can organize in more community-supported ways—such as CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture)—and build long-term relationships with the people who support their farming.
CSAs and other producer-consumer communities organize local supply and community while also connecting with other farms, businesses, and regions.
Organic and farm shops can evolve into member shops, becoming community-supported spaces for supply, distribution, and social interaction.
Wholesalers and logistics businesses can develop into regional consolidation structures, bringing together products from various producers, storing, picking, and distributing them within their region.
Mills, bakeries, dairies, slaughterhouses, and other processing businesses form key parts of the regional infrastructure, handling the processing of agricultural products.
Restaurants, canteens, community kitchens, and other B2B customers contribute their needs and can become reliable buyers within the shared supply structure.
Consumers and households are not just customers. As members, they can take responsibility and support agriculture, communities, and shared supply structures.
Cities, municipalities, and other public institutions can become important partners in bioregional supply. They can integrate regional supply into their procurement and development processes and—within the framework of applicable procurement rules—award contracts to suitable regional structures. A city like Zurich, for example, could source food for public kitchens, schools, care facilities, or other municipal institutions through a community-oriented regional consolidation structure. This way, public procurement can help create long-term, sustainable sales structures for bioregional supply.
NGOs, associations, foundations, and other civil society organizations can accompany such transformation processes. They can bring people together, share knowledge, enable participation, test new models, and pioneer change. Especially in the early stages of regional food networks, they can create spaces where agriculture, business, civil society, and public institutions jointly develop new forms of supply.
The TEIKEI Cooperative could economically connect these different participants. Farms, CSAs, member shops, wholesalers, processing businesses, B2B customers, consumers, and other stakeholders could become members themselves and thus part of the shared ownership structure.
Lightwave provides the digital infrastructure and takes responsibility for its long-term development—with software, coordination and trading tools, and intelligence where these support collaboration between communities, businesses, and regions.
The core intellectual property rights and the resulting values are held in a structure under steward ownership. This ensures they remain committed to their purpose in the long term rather than becoming speculative assets.
The Lightwave Lab simultaneously creates a non-profit space for research, development, and transformation. It enables pioneering work, shared knowledge, regional network development, and common-good-oriented infrastructure, and is also building a non-profit fund for this purpose.
Put simply:
TEIKEI connects communities, businesses, and regions.
Farms, communities, and companies support the supply.
Cities and public institutions can strengthen regional supply through procurement and partnerships.
NGOs and civil society organizations accompany the transformation and pioneer change.
The TEIKEI Cooperative creates a shared economic ownership structure.
Lightwave builds and maintains the digital infrastructure.
The Lightwave Lab enables non-profit research, development, and shared foundations.
Or even shorter:
Community and networking through TEIKEI.
Bioregional supply through local stakeholders.
Public partnership through cities and municipalities.
Pioneering and process support through civil society.
Shared economic ownership through the cooperative.
Digital infrastructure through Lightwave.
Non-profit development through the Lightwave Lab.
TEIKEI has grown over many years from relationships, regional food networks, community work, knowledge, software, and concrete projects.
In 2026, a new phase of development begins.
This is not about transferring everything into a new organization. It is about creating structures that can sustain what has emerged in the long term.
The values we have built are transferred into purpose-bound structures so they can serve the entire ecosystem in the long term.
The central question is:
What structures do we need so that what has emerged over many years can serve the development of community-based and bioregional food networks in the long term?
This gradually gives rise to a new support architecture.
TEIKEI connects communities, regional food networks, and partner businesses.
This is not about centrally building or standardizing regional structures through TEIKEI.
Many of these structures emerge from the regions themselves or already exist.
TEIKEI creates connections between them, supports the exchange of knowledge and experiences, and enables collaboration beyond the boundaries of individual communities and regions.
Here, producers, CSAs, processing businesses, member shops, regional consolidators, wholesalers, pickup points, B2B customers, consumers, cities, public institutions, NGOs, and other actors in the food system can connect with one another.
TEIKEI is thus primarily the space for relationships and networking.
Country and regional structures organize what makes sense locally. They connect existing communities, businesses, and people and develop their own forms of regional collaboration.
At the same time, it is clarified how, in particular, economic collaboration between these structures can be more strongly community-supported in the future.
On October 6, 2026, the TEIKEI Founding Clarification Conference will take place.
Together with people from the network and experienced facilitators from cooperative development, it will be examined whether enough people want to continue this path together and whether a cooperative is a suitable organizational form for this.
If there is sufficient support, an initiative group and subsequently a facilitated founding process can emerge.
Within such a network, not everyone has to do the same thing.
Existing structures can contribute what they already do well and evolve where community-supported supply opens up new opportunities.
Farms and small agricultural businesses can organize in more community-supported ways—such as CSA—and build long-term relationships with the people who support their farming.
CSAs and other producer-consumer communities organize local supply and community while also connecting with other farms, businesses, and regions.
Organic and farm shops can evolve into member shops, becoming community-supported spaces for supply, distribution, and social interaction.
Wholesalers and logistics businesses can develop into regional consolidation structures, bringing together products from various producers, storing, picking, and distributing them within their region.
Mills, bakeries, dairies, slaughterhouses, and other processing businesses form key parts of the regional infrastructure, handling the processing of agricultural products.
Restaurants, canteens, community kitchens, and other B2B customers contribute their needs and can become reliable buyers within the shared supply structure.
Consumers and households are not just customers. As members, they can take responsibility and support agriculture, communities, and shared supply structures.
Cities, municipalities, and other public institutions can become important partners in bioregional supply. They can integrate regional supply into their procurement and development processes and—within the framework of applicable procurement rules—award contracts to suitable regional structures. A city like Zurich, for example, could source food for public kitchens, schools, care facilities, or other municipal institutions through a community-oriented regional consolidation structure.
NGOs, associations, foundations, and other civil society organizations can accompany such transformation processes. They can bring people together, share knowledge, enable participation, test new models, and pioneer change. Especially in the early stages of regional food networks, they can create spaces where agriculture, business, civil society, and public institutions jointly develop new forms of supply.
The TEIKEI Cooperative could economically connect these different participants. Farms, CSAs, member shops, wholesalers, processing businesses, B2B customers, consumers, and other stakeholders could become members themselves and thus part of the shared ownership structure.
This does not create a centrally controlled supply system.
It creates a network of independent stakeholders and regions that connect where joint action makes sense.
For communities and regional food networks to work together, they need more than relationships.
They also need digital infrastructure.
This is where Lightwave comes in.
Lightwave develops, operates, and maintains the shared digital infrastructure for community-based and regional food networks.
A central part of this is the Agora.
This includes in particular:
Lightwave does not need to replace all processes of a wholesaler, CSA, member shop, or other organization.
The digital infrastructure can focus in particular on those areas where coordination between existing structures is necessary.
Put simply:
TEIKEI connects people, communities, businesses, and regions.
The stakeholders shape and support their local supply.
Lightwave provides the digital infrastructure that enables collaboration between these structures.
The Agora is a shared digital space through which communities, businesses, and regional food networks can coordinate their collaboration.
It is developed and operated by Lightwave.
This is not about replacing all existing regional systems with the Agora.
A CSA can continue to use its own member management system.
A wholesaler can work with its existing inventory management system.
A member shop can keep its own operational processes.
The Agora can connect where joint coordination is needed.
For example:
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This way, a shared technical infrastructure can be used while the actual collaboration remains organized regionally and by the respective stakeholders.
The planned TEIKEI Cooperative could use this infrastructure in particular to coordinate three interconnected flows:
This creates an important separation:
The stakeholders organize their work and supply locally.
The TEIKEI Cooperative can support the shared economy between them.
Lightwave develops and operates the necessary digital infrastructure with the Agora.
The cooperative does not have to be responsible for the development, programming, and operation of the software itself.
The core infrastructure should serve its purpose in the long term.
That is why Lightwave is being built under steward ownership.
Simply put, this means:
The core intellectual property rights and the built infrastructure values should not become assets that can later be sold for profit.
They are held in structures that permanently bind them to their mission.
The built values are transferred into purpose-bound structures so they can serve the entire ecosystem in the long term.
It is not just about giving up ownership.
It is about organizing responsibility in the long term.
Software, intelligence, and process assets should be gradually assigned to Lightwave in accordance with this mission.
In addition to community and digital infrastructure, another shared foundation is needed: knowledge.
Everywhere, people, farms, networks, organizations, research projects, and initiatives are working on positive food systems. Valuable experiences, methods, research, and practical solutions are emerging.
Chapter 100 connects this knowledge across the boundaries of individual networks and organizations.
This is explicitly not about taking over the knowledge of these stakeholders or consolidating it into a central knowledge database.
Existing knowledge spaces remain independent. Their sources, authors, organizations, and different perspectives remain visible and traceable.
Chapter 100 creates connections between them.
This gradually builds an open knowledge and relationship architecture for positive, local, and bioregional food systems.
This includes knowledge and experiences from:
TEIKEI is one of many networks that can contribute experiences and knowledge and connect with other knowledge spaces.
Ethical Artificial Intelligence (E-AI) is intended to help find and relate knowledge—without replacing sources, human judgment, and responsibility.
Knowledge should be connected without losing its origin and independence.
What has been learned in one place can thus become findable and usable for other people, networks, and regions.
Not all foundations the network needs can be developed and financed through trade, software fees, or traditional business models.
The Lightwave Lab creates a non-profit space for research, development, and transformation. Here, knowledge, pioneering work, regional network development, new models, and common-good-oriented infrastructure can be developed and tested.
This includes in particular:
Work results can be made openly accessible or—where necessary for their development and long-term purpose—protected and further developed.
Through a non-profit fund, philanthropic and other non-profit resources can be mobilized for this purpose.
The Lightwave Lab creates development spaces for shared foundations that go beyond the interests of individual organizations.
These different tasks also result in different financing needs.
Not everything needs to be financed in the same way.
Non-profit and philanthropic funds can enable knowledge, education, network development, pioneering and development work, as well as shared infrastructure.
Foundations and public funding programs can support socially relevant development work.
Cities, municipalities, and other public institutions can contribute to strengthening bioregional supply structures in the long term through procurement, contracts, partnerships, and suitable funding instruments.
Lightwave should increasingly cover a growing part of the digital infrastructure through software operations and services as usage grows.
Additional private and community-based financing models can enable further development spaces.
In the long term, this can create a cycle:
Economically viable infrastructure increasingly supports itself. Non-profit financing simultaneously enables those foundations that benefit many.
In the future, surpluses from economically viable structures can also flow back into shared and non-profit development work.
Many of today’s foundations have emerged over years from personal initiative, relationships, and entrepreneurial development.
The next step is to anchor these foundations in such a way that they do not remain permanently dependent on individuals.
This is not about saying:
“I transfer all my assets.”
More accurately:
The values we have built are transferred into purpose-bound structures so they can serve the entire ecosystem in the long term.
Or even more fundamentally:
What we have built should have structures that can support it beyond individual people.
This is the core of this development step.
Not simply giving up ownership, but anchoring responsibility in the long term.
When all structures and stakeholders are reduced to their basic functions, a clear picture emerges:
Community and Networking
TEIKEI connects communities, regional food networks, and partner businesses and enables exchange and collaboration between them.
Independent Local Organization
The regions develop and support forms of collaboration that fit their respective conditions.
Community-Supported Production
Farms can build long-term relationships with communities and evolve, for example, into community-supported forms of agriculture.
Supply and Social Interaction
Existing organic and farm shops can evolve into member shops and community-supported supply spaces.
Bundling and Distribution
Wholesalers and logistics businesses can use existing infrastructure and evolve into regional bundling and distribution structures.
Regional Processing
Mills, bakeries, dairies, slaughterhouses, and other businesses form important parts of a bioregional supply infrastructure.
Reliable Demand
Restaurants, canteens, community kitchens, and other businesses can contribute their needs and enable long-term purchasing relationships.
Supporting Instead of Just Consuming
People can not only source food but also take responsibility as members for the shared supply structures.
Public Partnership and Procurement
The public sector can strengthen bioregional supply through procurement, contracts, partnerships, and suitable frameworks.
Pioneering and Process Support
NGOs, associations, foundations, and other organizations can test new models, share knowledge, and accompany regional transformation processes.
Community-Based Economy
The potential cooperative can connect different stakeholders in a shared economic ownership structure and organize the economy between them.
Digital Infrastructure
Lightwave develops and operates the Agora and the underlying software, coordination, trading, intelligence, and process infrastructure.
Long-Term Purpose Commitment
Core infrastructure and intellectual property are held in such a way that they remain committed to their purpose in the long term.
Shared Knowledge
Chapter 100 connects knowledge and experiences from different people, organizations, and networks and makes them findable and usable.
Non-Profit Development
The Lightwave Lab enables research, pioneering work, and the development of shared foundations. The fund provides access to philanthropic and non-profit financing for this purpose.
TEIKEI connects communities, businesses, and regions. The stakeholders develop and support their local supply. Cities and public institutions can strengthen these structures through procurement and partnerships. NGOs and civil society organizations accompany the transformation and pioneer change. The TEIKEI Cooperative can create a shared economic ownership structure. Lightwave develops and operates the digital infrastructure. The Lightwave Lab enables non-profit research and development of shared foundations.
Or even shorter:
Community and networking through TEIKEI.
Bioregional supply through local stakeholders.
Public partnership through cities and municipalities.
Pioneering and process support through civil society.
Shared economic ownership through the cooperative.
Digital infrastructure through Lightwave.
Non-profit development through the Lightwave Lab.
2026 thus marks a transition.
For many years, the focus was on making things happen in the first place: relationships, communities, trade routes, knowledge, software, networks, and new forms of collaboration.
Now, another question arises:
How can these things be sustained in the long term?
The central question is therefore increasingly no longer just:
What do we build next?
but:
How do we organize what has emerged so it can serve its purpose in the long term?
The answer does not lie in a single organization.
It lies in the interplay of many independent stakeholders and structures with different tasks.
Community. Agriculture. Processing. Consolidation. Supply. Public sector. Civil society. Economy. Infrastructure. Knowledge. Responsibility. Financing.
Together, they can form the foundation for the next phase of development of the TEIKEI network.
↑ One level up: Strategy and Planning
By Felix Schröder, with support from AI (ChatGPT)
Created on September 9, 2026 · Last updated on October 1, 2026
Questions or feedback? support@teikei.us