What is CSA?
CSA, Community Supported Agriculture
means just that, the Community Supports the Agriculture, the farmer. You
know, the person who actually grows the food you eat. There’s
no middle man, no store, no storage, no heavy transport. Just
you and the farmer. What happens is you, the person
eating the food, pay the farmer directly at the start of the season a
lump sum, say $600, which at our CSA feeds a family of 4 people from
June to November. In return the farmer supplies you with a
box of fresh, just harvested food from his fields, and possibly a dozen
eggs just layed by his hens, and perhaps even a chicken.
A truckload of CSA shares being
delivered to the Unitarian Church
in Westport one sunny day in August.
When you take the CSA model a step further it becomes a
CSA cooperative, which works really well for community groups,
churches, synagogues. co-workers, neighborhoods, etc. See “When is a CSA
a co-op?”
What do you get? You get
whatever has just been harvested on the farm. After you
pay for a share in that season’s harvest you become a member. As
a member every week from June till November you are supplied a box of
fresh-from-the-farm produce. You will be eating exactly what is in
season where you live. This is proven to be the healthiest way to eat.
Most of it is vegetables. You might also get a
dozen eggs, or you can even add a chicken, for example.
Tell me some Benefits of a CSA. The CSA model
has a lot going for it. The farmer presells the food they are going to
grow. They now know exactly how much food to grow for
their CSA members. They know the people eating their food.
As a member we get to know the farmer, get connected to the farm
and feel “a part” of the process, because we are. The farmer delivers
us the freshest, healthiest food available directly from the farm.
Here’s
Jimmy Trombetta harvesting sweet potatoes for tomorrow’s CSA delivery.
We also share the risk that the farmer carries, of
unexpected bad weather or disease. We’re in it together.
As a model for the environment one of
the key benefits to this type of system is that there is no waste.
There is no need to fly or truck food to a store often thousands of
miles away then stick it on a shelf until 40% of it spoils
and gets thrown away.
Rotted
vegetables discarded.
None
of the spoiled food in stores today is composted or reused. More
than 29 million tons or $100 billion worth of spoiled food is thrown
out each year in our country.
In
the CSA co-op model no food is wasted. You can ask
volunteers to sign up to bring any leftfover food to your local food
bank. As a CSA member if you’re away on holiday or don’t like, say,
kale, you can leave it knowing that the food would be delivered to the
food bank the next day. This food is greatly appreciated and is well
used in soup kitchens and other places of need.
Another benefit for
farmer and CSA members is the flexibility when things change. For
example this past fall frost was very late, which extended the growing
season allowing more late season vegetables to be harvested. The farmer
contacted us and asked who might be interested in a 3-week “winter” CSA.
Several of us signed on and were rewarded with incredible root
vegetables, eggs and lettuce.
Sample box from the CSA Winter Harvest
How do you start a CSA? First thing to
do is drum up some interest. You might set up a screening
of one or more of the wonderful films on food that have been released
in the past few years. Films like Food Inc., The Real Dirt
on Farmer John, Fresh. Any of these films will get your
community group or congregation talking, and looking for alternatives to
the broken industrial food system we are currently engaged in. You might have
someone speak about alternatives like Farmer’s markets and CSA’s after
the screening. Get names of people interested.
Stacia Monahan
from Stone Gardens Farms talks to us about her farm and CSA membership.
Once you have some names you can find
yourself a farm. In our case we found a farm that wanted
to start a CSA but didn’t know how to get a number of families to sign
on. They were thrilled to hear that we had 30 families
willing to become members.
This was the impetus they needed to
change their farming style and grow a more diverse selection of
vegetables for their members.
Rows
of various crops growing on the farm for CSA members. Before you knew it we had a
co-operative with a membership of 42 families the first year, 120 the
second year and this year the farm is offering 400 shares, which we’re
pretty sure we’ll be able to fill.
When
is a CSA a co-op? Once you have a group of
people who agree to share food from the same farm and have
all signed on as CSA members you need a drop-off place for the food.
Hopefully the food is delivered by the farmer to the location.
This central location becomes the CSA co-op. Since the shares
all show up on the same day everybody picks up together throughout that
day. It becomes a gathering place, and a “captive
audience.
Families arriving to pick up their
shares. Thursday afternoons became a social event for many
of us, a chance to catch up and maybe trading our least favorite
vegetables with each other. Beets anyone?
Talking together we found that most of us wanted to
include more diverse items in our CSA, including bread, flowers and
fresh fruit. The farm did not offer these things but we
quickly found people who did. We hooked up with a
wonderful local bakery; Wave Hill Bread, who delivered 32 loaves of
bread each week, pre-paid for the season.
Some of the
loaves of fresh baked bread ready for pickup by CSA members.
During strawberry and blueberry season a couple of
students took it upon themselves to pick berries and then sell them to
us at a very reasonable rate. Bakers offered homemade baked goods.
Gardeners also set up a table of fresh flowers with a money jar
where people could pay $5 for a bouquet of dahlias for example.
Barbara picking
up her CSA share and adding some flowers. You can see how
the simple act of bringing people together to share food can quickly
evolve into an exciting co-operative of local goods and services.
Challenges?
Like any new experiment we learned some lessons, none too painful.
The first year we split up the 42 families into
“teams”, 8 families per team. There was a team captain who
came up with a list of who would go to the farm that week to pick up
shares for their team. Like most volunteer endeavors, life
got in the way. People would forget that it was their
week to pick up or would be late, leaving families with no food. So in hindsight I
wouldn’t recommend this format. Relying on volunteers
with no “paid staff” organizing everyone does not seem to work, at least
it didn’t in this case. I’m sure there is a better way to
organize this and I’m looking forward to finding out what it is. If you have
enough members, which we now do, your farm may agree to truck the boxes
directly to a central location, which becomes the center for the co-op.
Here the farmer is about to unload
120 CSA shares one Thursday morning. Rachel Correla is standing beside
boxes of lettuce to be added to the boxes. Easier to stack
the boxes this way.
Do I dare mention the concept of
“sharing” boxes of food for families of less than 4 people. If
you picked up your share at the farm you could ask for “half a share”.
But, in the case of a co-op the food is trucked to an off-site
location and it’s simply not efficient to send half-empty boxes of food.
In this case it’s up to the co-op to assign boxes to families
sharing. Shared boxes need to be numbered, which adds a
whole level of complexity and work. My only recommendation is to try to
insist that people sign up for full shares and if they want to split
their shares they can do so on their own time. (or get
someone really smart to organize this.) Saying all that it
is nice to be able to offer shares to small families and singles and
this dimension adds to the “sharing” feeling at the co-op.
Views
of CSA shares stacked on couches in the youth meeting room.
How to expand “gracefully”: The third year
of our CSA is quickly approaching with a promise from the farmer of
enough food to fill 400 shares. Time to find more members.
The last two years we have held “informational lunches and dinners”.
Fresh local soup or a potluck is offered and the farmer is on
hand to answer questions and explain how the CSA works. This
has been very successful, not to mention fun and community building.
Soup being served, Stacia explains
the CSA concept to the crowd on hand.
With 400 members
the question of expanding space becomes an issue. We know
that our current location, the meeting house at the Unitarian church,
will not accommodate 400 members and the honor system probably won’t
hold up to that size crowd. This past year the town of Westport
“gave” our group, Westport GVI, a farm in the heart of Westport.
Over 2 acres of farmland, which we’ll turn into demonstration gardens,
teaching people how to grow their own food. The barns will
make a perfect drop-off location for CSA shares. If you
told me 2 years ago that this would be possible I really wouldn’t
believe you. It does show us that when we follow through
on an idea and it’s a good one things just seem to fall in place and the
concept takes on a life of its own.
How can I get help with this? For more information on CSA’s
or the Stone Gardens Farm CSA in Shelton go
to www.stonegardensfarm.com.