What is it?
For over 25 years, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) has become a popular way for consumers to buy local, seasonal food directly from a farmer.
Here are the basics: a farmer offers a certain number of “shares” to the public. Typically the share consists of a box of vegetables, but other farm products may be included. Interested consumers purchase a share (aka a “membership” or a “subscription”) and in return receive a box (bag, basket) of seasonal produce each week throughout the farming season.
This arrangement creates several rewards for both the farmer and the consumer. In brief:
Advantages for farmers:
- Get to spend time marketing the food early in the year, before their 16 hour days in the field begin
- Receive payment early in the season, which helps with the farm’s cash flow
- Have an opportunity to get to know the people who eat the food they grow
Advantages for consumers:
- Eat ultra-fresh food, with all the flavour and vitamin benefits
- Get exposed to new vegetables and new ways of cooking
- Usually get to visit the farm at least once a season
- Find that kids typically favour food from “their” farm – even veggies they’ve never been known to eat
- Develop a relationship with the farmer who grows their food and learn more about how food is grown
It’s a simple enough idea, but its impact has been profound. In the USA, for example, tens of thousands of families have joined CSAs, and in some areas of the country there is more demand than there are CSA farms to fill it.
Variations
As you might expect with such a successful model, farmers have begun to introduce variations.
“mix and match,” or “market-style” CSA
Here, rather than making up a standard box of vegetables for every member each week, the members load their own boxes with some degree of personal choice. The farmer lays out baskets of the week’s vegetables. Some farmers encourage members to take a prescribed amount of what’s available, leaving behind just what their families do not care for. Some CSA farmers then donate this extra produce to a food bank. In other CSAs, the members have wider choice to fill their box with whatever appeals to them, within certain limitations. (e.g. “Just one basket of strawberries per family, please.”)
CSAs aren’t confined to produce...
Some farmers include the option for shareholders to buy shares of eggs, homemade bread, meat, cheese, fruit, flowers or other farm products along with their veggies.
Sometimes several farmers will offer their products together, to offer the widest variety to their members. For example, a produce farmer might create a partnership with a neighbour to deliver chickens to the CSA drop off point, so that the CSA members can purchase farm-fresh chickens when they come to get their CSA baskets.
Other farmers are creating standalone CSAs for meat, flowers, eggs, and preserved farm products.
In some parts of the country, non-farming third parties are setting up CSA-like businesses, where they act as middle men and sell boxes of local (and sometimes non-local) food for their members.
Shared Risk
There is an important concept woven into the CSA model that takes the arrangement beyond the usual commercial transaction. That is the notion of shared risk: in most CSAs, members pay up front for the whole season and the farmers do their best to provide an abundant box of produce each week. If things are slim, members are not typically reimbursed. The result is a feeling of “we’re in this together”. On some farms the idea of shared risk is stronger than others, and CSA members may be asked to sign a policy form indicating that they agree to accept without complaint whatever the farm can produce.
Many times, the idea of shared risk is part of what creates a sense of community among members, and between members and the farmers. If a hailstorm takes out all the peppers, everyone is disappointed together, and together cheer on the winter squash and broccoli. Most CSA farmers feel a great sense of responsibility to their members, and when certain crops are scarce, they make sure the CSA gets served first.
Still, it is worth noting that very occasionally things go wrong on a farm – like they do in any kind of business – and the expected is not delivered, and members feel short-changed. LocalHarvest, a CSA operation in the US, are in touch with CSA farmers and members from all over the country. Every year they get complaints about a few CSA farms (two to six farms a year, over the last nine years) where something happened and the produce was simply unacceptable. It might have been a catastrophic divorce, or an unexpected death in the family. Or the weather was abominable, or the farmer was inexperienced and got in over his/her head.
In their experience, if the situation seems regrettable but reasonable – a bad thing that in good faith could have happened to anyone – most CSA members will rally, if they already know and trust the farmer. These people are more likely to take the long view, especially if they have received an abundance of produce in the past. They are naturally more likely to think, “It’ll be better next year,” than are new members who have nothing to which to compare a dismal experience. The take-home message is this: if the potential for “not getting your money’s worth” makes you feel anxious, then shared risk may not be for you and you should shop at the farmers market.
Sometimes they hear complaints from CSA members in situations where it appears to that nothing really went wrong, but the member had unreasonable expectations.
Source: https://www.localharvest.org/csa/
Overview of CSA in Europe
The experiments in farming represent new social forms of agriculture which have arisen in recent years while traditional family farms have declined and industrial agriculture has increased. These new famers involve many local families directly in the decisions and labour which produce the vegetables, fruits, milk, and meat they eat. In that way they re-establish a link between the farm, the farmer, and the consumer. While this approach may not be the full answer to the questions posed by the modern agricultural dilemma, we believe it has much to offer.
In simple terms, these efforts arise under the name Community Support Agriculture (CSA). A CSA is a community-based organisation of growers and consumers. The consumer households live independently, but agree to provide direct, up-front support for the local growers who produce their food. The growers agree to do their best to provide a sufficient quantity and quality of food to meet the needs and expectations of the consumers. In this way the farms and families form a network of mutual support. Within this general framework there is wide latitudes for variation, depending on the resources and desires of the participants. No two community farms are entirely
alike.
Source and pdf. of the book Overview of Community Supported Agriculture in Europe
CSA in Australia
Community-supported agriculture (CSA) is a model of food production and distribution that directly connects farmers and eaters – people buy shares in a farm’s projected harvest in advance and for a set period (a season, or a year, for example) and receive regular deliveries. Being part of CSA is a way for eaters to share with the farmer the costs and risks of farming as well as the bounty.
CSAs vary in their structure and payment terms, but the principle is that farms supply their produce directly to their members through a subscription model – a commitment from the eater is made to accept the produce they are given and to share the risk of the harvest with the farmer. CSA started in the 1970s in Japan by organic vegetable farmers and is now widespread and growing around the world. It is based on the Principles of Teikei (1978).
Australia has a growing CSA movement as small-scale farmers move to this solidarity economy for financial security, risk sharing, and deeper connection with the people who eat their produce.
Source: https://afsa.org.au/csa/
Videos
USA
UK
Europe
FAO [May 2016]: Overview of Community Supported Agriculture in Europe
The consumer perspective
Articles
2.04.2020 Is This the Start of a CSA Boom?
Marnie Dresser never thought she’d want to sign up for a CSA again. “I tried it once and it felt like too much pressure,” she says. “I just wanted to go to the farmers market.” Dresser is an English professor in Wisconsin and lives in a town so small that its store shelves “didn’t even empty of toilet paper as soon as the other places,” as she describes it. But as spring break at the college where she teaches got extended and cases of COVID-19 continued to spread across the country, a CSA — in which farmers sell “shares” of their produce before the season starts (often in the winter or spring, when money is tight for farmers but expenses for the upcoming growing season are high) and customers receive produce boxes throughout the CSA season — started to sound more appealing.
Read more
19.02.2019 The Evolution of the CSA – Part 1: The Rise, Decline, & Reinvention
Why are CSA sales declining? In many areas of the country, CSAs are reporting declining sales and fewer number of returning customers. FMC Senior Advisor Darlene Wolnik takes a look at the issue in this two-part blog series. Here in Part 1, she examines the origins of the CSA movement in the U.S and the current pressures facing CSAs, including the CSA definition, the explosion of box programs run by non-farms, and the barriers to using benefit programs as CSA members.
Read more
5.06.2017 Trends in Community Supported Agriculture Business Strategies to Enhance Your CSA
04.2017 Community Supported Agriculture – New Models for Changing Markets
