—Robyn VanEn


At a time when farms are disappearing at an alarming rate, and some refer to family farms as an endangered species, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) offers an alternative. CSA is a growing social and agricultural movement that can offer a path to farm preservation, stability and profitability, at the same time that it connects people with their food supply and builds community. Community Supported Agriculture links the source of food (the farm and farmer) to the destination of the food (the consumer, or eater). A central concept in CSA is that farm members, as partners with the farmer, share some of the risks of production.

CSA can be approached variously as a strategy for saving the farm, an innovative marketing tool, or a philosophical point of view. Sometimes consumers, concerned about their food, form a core group and start a farm, renting or purchasing land and hiring a farmer or manager. More often a farmer will designate all or a portion of the farm to a CSA project. While some farmers are using CSA merely as a marketing tool, more often it includes a more significant purpose, reflecting the farmer’s values related to small farms, environmental concerns, sustainability, the local community, and organic production techniques.

In its most basic form the CSA farm produces vegetables for a group of farm members or subscribers who pay in advance for their share of the harvest. Typically the farm members receive their share once a week, sometimes coming to the farm to pick up their share; other farms deliver to a central point. The most common products of a CSA are vegetables in a wide variety. Many include fruit in the shares. But increasingly CSAs offer additional products, like honey, eggs, meat, firewood, bread…we even know of one that offers shares of home made beer. Most, perhaps all, CSA farms are producing their produce using organic methods, though many are not certified because their members know the farmer(s) and trust them to use organic practices. Many are biodynamic.


Good for the Farmer, Good for the Consumer, Good for the Land
The farmer is relieved of the burden of marketing produce at just the time when the energy needed to grow the crops is greatest. CSA farmers concentrate on farming, on what they do best.

Members of the farm receive both concrete and subtle benefits. While spending from $200 to $500 or more in advance for vegetables which are not even planted yet is difficult for some (both financially and emotionally) membership is generally a good deal in the long run. Each week during the harvest season members receive an interesting variety of the freshest possible produce. Almost all CSA farms are using organic farming techniques, so concerns over toxic residues on the food are alleviated. Membership in a community farm provides a link to the production of food impossible for the supermarket or even the farm stand shopper to achieve. Members see their veggies growing, watch them form and ripen, fret over difficult weather; many even get dirt under their fingernails helping out on the farm.

The land is treated with the respect it deserves as the base of the entire operation and indeed as the base of human life. In all operations - pest management, tillage, fertilization - the effect on soil is considered.
All CSAs are small within the context of modern agriculture and many are very small indeed. Farms cultivating less than an acre are not uncommon, and an income for a small family is possible on just a few acres. A large CSA operation might take place on 40 or 60 acres. The number of members served can range from just a few friends and neighbors to 1000 or more. The farms tend to be more energy efficient than their more conventional neighbors, with plenty of handwork and small machinery and relatively little energy expended in distribution (the average distance from food to plate outside of community supported agriculture is 1300 miles!).