What is CSA?

By Sonita Oldfield-Carlson,

CSA Director, The Farm at Skeeter Creek

For 20 years now, the concept of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) has been growing as a distinctive marketing and community-building concept which connects local consumers and growers more directly than conventional food distribution systems.  Essentially, fresh produce is provided to prepaid subscribers—usually referred to as members or “sharers”—directly from a local farm or market garden during all or part of a growing season.  The benefits of belonging to a CSA are numerous and, often times, personal.  In general, though:

· A direct relationship is formed with the grower of your food so you know where it came from and how it was grown (usually organically.)

· The distance your produce travels (called food miles) is greatly reduced, which makes it fresher, helps it retain quality, taste and nutrients, and lessens the environmental impact of traditional food transportation.

· By agreeing to buy your produce from a local grower at a reasonable price, you directly help sustain our local economy and retain more capital in our local community.

· You invest in building a partnership that directly benefits you and the land that sustains you.

The accepted history of Community Supported Agriculture in the United States is that Jan VanderTuin brought the concept from Switzerland in 1984 where CSA projects had been sprouting up there and in other parts of Europe since the 1960s.  CSA projects were also found in Japan in the 1960s when women’s neighborhood groups began approaching farmers to develop direct, cooperative relationships between producers and consumers, known as ‘teikei.’  The mother of the American movement was Robyn Van En, whose Indian Line Farm in Massachusetts was one of the first two CSAs in the United States.  They began distributing their first harvest shares in 1986. Today, there are more than a thousand CSAs across the country (approximately 52 in Illinois and Iowa).

With their subscription, CSA members agree to share in the risks as well as the abundance, both of which can be challenging for different reasons, obviously. A season of extreme weather (dry or wet) will limit the amount of harvest to be shared among members. Likewise, a season of lush weekly shares may go to waste if members tire of storing and preparing a profusion of fresh vegetables and fruit on an ongoing basis.

To learn more about CSA in general, visit these websites:

localharvest.org

foodroutes.org

farmpaths.org