Figure 3.1. Two images show Evening Song Farm in Vermont before Hurricane Irene (top) and after the storm and flooding ravaged its topsoil (bottom). Photographs by Ryan Wood-Beauchamp and Kara Fitzgerald
Understanding Community Supported Agriculture
CSA is not just a clever, new approach to marketing. Community farming is about the necessary renewal of agriculture through its healthy linkage with the human community that depends upon farming for survival.
—Steven McFadden
As defined by the US Department of Agriculture, a CSA “consists of a community of individuals who pledge support to a farm operation so that the farmland becomes, either legally or spiritually, the community’s farm, with the growers and consumers providing mutual support and sharing the risks and benefits of food production.”1 The consensus emphasizes the collective, political, and economic nature of the arrangement, defining it as “an alternative, locally-based economic model of agriculture and food distribution” that involves a “network or association of individuals who have pledged to support one or more local farms, with growers and consumers sharing the risks and benefits of food production.”2 Our notion of a CSA most closely aligns with the one Indian Line Farm uses: an organization that “brings together community members and farmers in a relationship of mutual support based on an annual commitment to one another.… Members purchase a ‘share’ of the anticipated harvest and make payment in advance at an agreed upon price.” In exchange, the farmers grow, raise, and care for bounty that subscribers share. As the Indian Line website says, “In short, the farmer and members become partners in the production, distribution and consumption of locally grown food.”3
In 1985, Massachusetts-based Indian Line Farm and New Hampshire-based Temple-Wilton Community Farm pioneered CSAs in the United States, and in 1986 they marked their first CSA growing season.4 Where did they come from? Many sources point to the Teiki movement in Japan in the mid-1970s, in which groups of women who, concerned about the agricultural chemicals used in food production, partnered with local farmers on an annual basis to procure food produced in a manner acceptable to them for feeding their families. While this story is often cited as the origin of CSAs in the United States, longtime CSA expert Steven McFadden points to even earlier developments. According to McFadden, Indian Line Farm and Temple-Wilton Community Farm more directly associated their work with the wide-ranging Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925). In addition to developing innovative educational and social reforms, Steiner advocated a theory of “biodynamic” farming that would address what he saw as the physical and metaphysical qualities of agriculture. He advocated practices for soil fertility and crop success with such mystical treatments as animal blood and planetary influences. By the 1970s, some of these theories had found their way into US alternative agriculture and, indeed, persist here today.5 Perhaps Steiner’s most important contribution to agricultural innovation, apart from attention to soil amendments, was to focus on farming as a system of relationships that incorporates farm owners, workers, consumers, and the land. According to McFadden, decisions at the Temple-Wilton Farm were driven by concerns for new models of property ownership and human relations and by the “needs of the land and of the people involved in this enterprise.”
Yet an often-overlooked origin of the modern-day CSA stems from the work of Dr. Booker T. Whatley, an African American farmer and scholar who, according to Natasha Bowens, began promoting the concept of a community supported farm several years before the Indian Line and Temple-Wilton farms were established.6 As documented by a 1982 interview in Mother Earth News magazine, Whatley advanced the possibility of making “$100,000 on 25 acres” using regenerative (sustainable) farming methods and through “membership” that built a community around the farm. Bowens traces Whatley’s model for community supported agriculture to 1960s and 1970s Alabama and contends that his ideas were reaching as many as twenty thousand small farmers through subscriptions to Whatley’s newsletter and training seminars. Much like the modern-day CSA, Whatley’s model “enables the farmer to plan production, anticipate demand, and, of course, have a guaranteed market” by mostly catering to suburban and urban dwellers so that they can partake in “the privilege of coming to the farm and harvesting produce.”
Today the CSA movement includes approximately twelve thousand farms and has outpaced farmers’ markets in sheer numbers. CSAs have taken hold, in part, because they offer a proactive way for consumers to gain greater accountability for and control over the sources and methods of food production. More people want healthier, environmentally sound food. At the same time, farmers appreciate up-front capital to fund their season’s expenses and ensure information and supply channels to customers. In addition, associating oneself officially with a farm also provides satisfying resonances with the recent American past for many people.
According to Melea Press and Eric Arnould, CSAs address the tension between a pastoral ideal and the desire for consumer amenities produced by industrialization.7 They identify five key reasons why CSAs are well designed to resolve this uncomfortable contradiction.
1. CSAs offer food that is often produced sustainably and without chemical additives, providing an antithesis for conventional or industrial production.
2. CSAs allow individuals to join small groups and to engage with them meaningfully.
3. CSAs model a way to both connect with nature and embrace consumption.
4. CSAs offer both food security and food sovereignty, along with more adequate supplies of food and more meaningful choices regarding them than are offered by the industrial system.
5. CSAs continue a national narrative about successful American pastoralism.
They make a consistent next chapter in a story that begins with the American colonial farmer and continues to 1950s suburban home-ownership and 1970s back-to-the-land self-sufficiency. The CSA and urban agriculture movements of today allow people who are otherwise disconnected from food production to construct a plausible role for themselves in this central story of our nation.
After more than a quarter century of development in North America, the diffuse beginnings of CSAs mean continuing challenges in how to define and realize these partnerships in the context of twenty-first-century agrarian initiatives. Questions persist: What does the “community” part of community supported agriculture really mean? Is a CSA a marketing scheme, a shopping alternative, or a social movement? What are the benefits of subscribing? Who subscribes and who remains missing from the community? What is in store for the CSAs of tomorrow? This chapter critically considers the role of CSAs in a new resettling of America.
Community Ideal or Just Another Marketing Scheme
Steven McFadden, in The Call of the Land: An Agrarian Primer for the 21st Century, describes the philosophy of community supported agriculture as “an economic and social association among local households and farmers who share the responsibility of producing and delivering fresh food.”8 The ways that CSAs vary their emphasis and share responsibility between economics and socialities, consumers and farmers, results in different operational models. One way to consider their differences is on a typological continuum from community ideal to marketing approach. From an outside observer, CSAs may look quite similar; however, they vary greatly based on governance structure, true ownership design, and mission-driven ambitions.
The Biodynamic Association leans toward community building. It describes the ideal CSA as one in which farmers and shareholders collaborate “together on behalf of the Earth,” sharing responsibilities such as general risks that are normally associated with farming (weather, pests, disease, etc.).9 The Biodynamic Association describes these kinds of CSAs as being organized around three main groups of stakeholders: farmers, a core group, and consumers. Farmers generally complete all the agricultural activities without interference from the other two groups. The core group, comprised of farmers and consumers, handles the business side of the operation: marketing, share-payment collection, farmer payments, legal issues, special event organization, recruitment of new shareholders, and so on. Finally, the consumer group focuses entirely on buying shares and receiving the farm’s bounty. This idealized CSA appeals for many reasons; foremost, it seeks to produce healthy, sustainably grown food. In addition, this model of the CSA supports community development, promotes health, fosters the local ecology, provides recreation and leisure pursuits, and offers education. Many CSAs do incorporate these attributes and aspirations; however, common also is the CSA that emphasizes its marketing approach, which focuses on the consumer(s) assuming greater risks and stabilizing finances through a pre-sourced distribution outlet. Often left out is the broader goal of the CSA movement: community development. In essence, the two examples described represent opposite ends of a continuum, with the biodynamic version of the CSA at one end and the marketing-oriented version at the opposite end.
Most CSAs are someplace in between. Tailored to both farmer and shareholder needs, they allow for more fluidity in style and structure than, say, farmers’ markets and small groceries. CSAs include the traditional single-farmer model as well as those that have hybridized with farmers’ markets; collaborations among several growers; size-based, weight-based or price-based shares; specialty-only shares of products like meat, dairy, organic fruit, or bread; and value-added bonuses. The remainder of this section provides examples of a variety of CSAs selling a diversity of products.
Among the most common variations on the CSA continuum are the single- and multi-farm providers. For example, Evenstar Farm in Eagle, Idaho, is a single farm that sells thirty shares for a season that runs from May through early October.10 Both full and half shares are available, and shareholders acquire their produce at a 20–30 percent discount when compared to local food retailed at farmers’ markets and grocery stores. The farm grows common vegetables, such as tomatoes, cabbage, squash, and collards, along with unique items like herbs and uncommon greens. This single-farm model is likely the most prevalent in North America; however, it is not without challenges. In particular, based as they are with a family or individual farmer, single-farm CSAs mean intensive concentration of all aspects of agribusiness—growing, marketing, distribution—on just a limited number of people. One illness, accident, or other setback in this case affects all of those doing the work of the farm and their collective income.
Alternatively, multi-farm CSAs work cooperatively, aiming together toward the same goal.11 Multi-farm CSAs have the latitude to distribute effort. For example, they may focus one grower on warm-season produce while another focuses on season extension and winter production. Or they may invite in specialist growers, such as those in vegetable, tree fruit, dairy, meat, and egg production, so that shareholders can access most of their local culinary ingredients from a single distribution location. Cooperation allows more products and more selective ones, and it can also mean distribution of other farm needs, including sharing labor, equipment, marketing, accounting, certification, maintenance, and so on. The Local Harvest CSA in New Hampshire, for example, cooperatively organizes six New Hampshire farms that together can serve three hundred shareholders from May through November.
While the vast majority of CSAs grow and distribute vegetables, other types that specialize in fruits, meat, eggs, and dairy products are increasingly popular. However, their focus can introduce more vulnerability than in a diversified model. Until 2015, the Wayne-Egenolf, or WE, Farm was one of only a few meat CSAs in the Bloomington, Indiana, area, raising cattle, hogs, and poultry on 150 acres of leased pasture and forest. The farm’s shareholders contracted for a share of meat produced from the farm. The shares were offered for three-month intervals at two levels—value and prime. They also sold products direct to consumers and retailers throughout the area. Also in the area, Maple Valley Farm, run by Larry and Tina Howard, raises grass-fed beef, lambs and goats and pasture-raised pigs, chickens, laying hens, and turkeys. Not quite a CSA, the farm offers partnerships in their live herd. In essence, people can buy a “real ownership stake” by which they “own the livestock and get a predetermined portion of the entire animal (e.g., ¼ cow, ½ pig). You have control over the cuts and the entire portion of the animal is available for your consumption.”12 The intent, in this case, is for the farmers and the partners to more closely cooperate to “support consumer choice, environmental stewardship, farm sustainability, community, health and animal welfare” and a living wage.
Unlike a relatively straightforward regulatory situation for meat CSAs, those specializing in milk must negotiate additional in-state rules and regulations as well as processing guidelines and opportunities. The crux of the complications for milk is healthfulness, or perceptions of healthfulness, when it is sold “raw.” As of 2013, the purchase of raw milk was entirely illegal in ten states, legal as pet food in three states, and legal through herd shares in eleven states where state statute, policy, court decision, or ambiguity of state government policy influences enforcement. The sale of raw milk directly from the farm, in 2013, was legal in sixteen states, and ten states allow its sale in retail establishments.13 Given that most state rules are set up to support off-the-farm processing at commercial dairies, and few small farms can warrant the construction of on-the-farm processing facilities for milk, dairy CSAs are commonly used for distribution of unprocessed milk. Groundwork Farms in Millheim, Pennsylvania, is positioned in a state that, with a proper permit, allows retail sales, farmers’ market sales, and sales both on and off the farm.14 They offer a dairy CSA share to complement their produce, herb, egg, and bread options.15 Their shareholders sign up for a thirteen-week period or more to receive a variety of dairy products such as raw milk, cheese, yogurt, butter, and cream. Similarly, cow and herd shares can circumvent laws and policies prohibiting the retail sale of raw milk, because the customers are legally part owners of the animal or herd. Customer payments are credited to the care and boarding of the animal, and in exchange, customers receive a portion of the milk or other value-added product. While not entirely synonymous with CSAs, cow and herd shares also use a shareholder structure, and weekly allotments are generally provided (table 3.1). In addition, for both, the return on investment is a portion of the weekly bounty, and the risk of loss on investment is shared among producers and consumers. However, while CSAs contract for a share of the products of a farm or cooperative, animal shareholders hold a stake in the animals themselves.
Table 3.1. Comparison of Traditional Produce CSAs with Cow/Herd Shares
Traditional Produce CSAs |
Dairy Cow/Herd Shares |
|
Commitment |
Financial commitment to the farm, prior to the growing season |
Financial commitment to the farm/herd/cow can be started and terminated at most any time |
Cost |
Based on quantity of weekly allotment, associated with size and number of shares |
Based on the individual shareholder’s quantity of weekly allotment, associated with size and number of shares; original up-front share cost and weekly boarding/care fee. |
Length of Time |
Generally based on length of season |
Runs indefinitely |
Return on Investment |
Weekly allotment of produce |
Normally scheduled allotment of product (varies based on share type, product, etc.) |
Ownership Status |
Shareholder |
Shareholder |
Risk Involved |
Loss of crops / return on investment |
Loss of animals / return on investment |
Major Differences |
Share price must be paid anew with each season; CSAs generally represent a formal commitment for a set period of time. |
Weekly fees also apply; termination opportunities; payment method—dairy, for example—generally does not need to be paid entirely up front, as the commitment extends for much longer or indefinitely. |
The Farmers and the Shareholders
Spearheading a CSA has numerous benefits for the farmers as well as a host of challenges. CSAs provide economic stability through a committed community of shareholders; however, they demand a capacity for customer service, marketing, transparency, and resilience for when things go wrong.
From a farmer’s perspective, the biggest advantage of a CSA is the economic stability it brings. Because subscribers pay for their shares up front—generally speaking, several months before they begin to receive the farm’s bounty—they create a stable base of both capital and community. Farmers can then plan for those shares and diversify from them. The farmer can script the season’s seeds, animals, inputs, and labor with greater knowledge of what will be needed to fulfill the farm’s commitments. Additionally, they can engage the shareholders to inform crop selection, to provide labor for special projects, and to market the farm. However, such partnerships do not always come naturally. For example, in about 2010, parishioners at the First Presbyterian Church in Huntington, West Virginia, started the area’s first CSA in order to gain better access to local produce. Taking this new idea for acquiring food with her, Sara Farmer, James’s wife, went to the winter meeting of Huntington’s Central City Farmers’ Market to make a pitch to the farmers she hoped to recruit. Indeed, after the meeting, one farmer stuck around to inquire further about the idea even though the rest dismissed the scheme. After Sara and the farmer had several telephone conversations, and she made a personal visit to the farm, Lewis Bodimer, a longtime produce farmer and market vendor who raised produce across the river in Gallipolis, Ohio, agreed to give the CSA model a try. The final hurdle, however, was that Lewis and his wife, Rebecca, objected to taking an early season payment for produce delivered much later. Their ethical commitment to the principle of payment upon delivery nearly derailed the venture. The resulting compromise saw the up-front subscription funds held by the church for weekly distribution to the farmers. After that, recruitment of more shareholders was simple: the church posted an announcement on its Facebook page. Within seven days, parishioners at First Presbyterian and another nearby church had bought forty shares. What seemed to be a speculative enterprise continues to thrive today, a partnership of its committed community and forthright farmers.
Figure 3.1. Two images show Evening Song Farm in Vermont before Hurricane Irene (top) and after the storm and flooding ravaged its topsoil (bottom). Photographs by Ryan Wood-Beauchamp and Kara Fitzgerald
A community committing to providing up-front capital for the season and assistance with marketing, then, is also sharing the risk of the farming operation. This is a risk that is acutely understood by farmers but probably less so by consumers, who are used to the seemingly bottomless supplies of an American marketplace sourced and aggregated from all over the world. In this way, CSAs differ markedly even from farmers’ markets, a down-home form of aggregation that mitigates risk to consumers. CSA shareholders, knowingly or not, sign on to share not only in bounty but also in risk—of pests, mechanical mishaps, seed mistakes, physical injuries, and crop failures. Weather, the most notoriously uncontrollable of all farming inputs, can be too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry, too windy or too still, too steady or too volatile. While a complete crop failure is unlikely for a diversified farmer, the ever shifting combination of variables means crop yields are always a gamble. Farmers with less experience provide additional unknowns, even in years with the best growing conditions.
While some losses are unavoidable, few are as catastrophic as those experienced at Evening Song Farm in Cuttingsville, Vermont. When Hurricane Irene blew up the eastern US seaboard in 2011, it left a path of profound geological impact in its wake as torrents of rain were dumped on the Appalachian mountain hillsides in New England. Few farms likely suffered worse than Evening Song. Sitting along the swollen Mill River, Evening Song lost its high tunnel greenhouses and all crops planted in the fields to flooding. In fact, as dramatic photographs show, the river washed the farm’s topsoil down to the underlying bedrock.
Obviously, Evening Song’s CSA shareholders lost their investment that year. But the farmers, Kara Fitzgerald and Ryan Wood Beauchamp, lost something more profound: any potential of growing crops on this land for quite some time. According to the farmers’ blog, they received help from shareholders, friends, family members, neighbors, local businesses, and other organizations from across the United States so that they could reconstruct greenhouses and a produce barn. In addition, they were offered use of farmland in the interim while they strategized their next steps, and forty tractor-trailer loads of paper fiber and fertilizer were donated by a local company (Resource Management Inc.) to help reestablish a cover of topsoil on the decimated field. Today, Evening Song Farm flourishes through the provisioning of food via their CSA, the local farmers’ market, and sales to area businesses.16 This story of Evening Song Farm’s revival exemplifies the power of the community component in “CSA.” In a short period of time, with the aid of the CSA and the broader community, Evening Song had moved from a private operation to a communal investment, an icon of perseverance.
Still, CSAs are not a panacea for farmers. In fact, running a CSA presents numerous challenges. In particular, specialized operations can introduce more vulnerability than in a diversified model. As a case in point, even though WE Farm was one of only a few meat CSAs in the Bloomington, Indiana, area, it struggled. Like many other CSA owners, Laura Beth Wayne and Josh Egenolf marketed their personal dedication to the land, animals, plant life, soil, and community as much as their meat. The WE website included a blog of farming delights and challenges that shareholders responded to with enthusiasm. For example, Egenolf wrote on December 7, 2010:
My hands, feet, and nose are shrouded in frost in little time. The calves backs are laced with icy crystals and they are bawling as I pass by, my truck dash so stiff with the cold I swear it will fracture like the San Andreas with the first pothole I come to in the road. It does not. I return 10 minutes later with a snow-capped bale of hay; they are glad to see me, as they have wallowed the final remains of their last bale for bedding. They dive tongue-first into their new prize, pulling tufts of dried fescue in by the mouthful. I go check their water tank. It is frozen solid. The fuse that powers the tank heater is out, but nature is little forgiving of such failures. With a new fuse and few hours of heat, the water will flow again. The calves will take that water, take that hay, and with some time and some good husbandry from us, convert it into food. Such a situation few get to experience, to misguided others it seems insufferable and cruel to these beasts, but to those of us choosing to slow down and appreciate it, it is actually an incredible miracle. All flesh is grass, and is so in the most seemingly harsh situations. I am charged by the notion that I have the privilege to witness the miracle of creating flesh from grass, no from the sun and soil through grass and into beast, so that others might enjoy it as food and add it to their own being. I am privileged to witness, share, and husband such things.… I cannot thank you enough. In supporting our farm, our stewardship, and our family, you in turn support yourselves by making healthy the very community, landscape, body, and mind on which you depend. I am thankful you care enough to support a farm which is pro-local, pro-diversity, and pro-earthworm! I am comforted by such notions, and my heart is warmed.17
Under the prevailing spirit of mindfulness and uplift, one can detect in this essay the enormous physical, social, and financial responsibilities that farming presents. Indeed, some five years later WE Farm sold its animals and closed its website despite the community’s enthusiastic reception for its high-quality products.18 With more than a million and a half people in Indianapolis (sixty miles away) and one hundred thousand residents in Bloomington (fifteen miles away), WE Farm seemed well positioned geographically to tap into the increased demand for naturally raised local food. But achieving “balance” in life and work, so that there is time for family and other pursuits, is a persistent challenge for small farmers, and other meat-based CSAs have also struggled. On their website Wayne writes, “We have to reevaluate how WE Farm fits into our lives. I truly believe that it will evolve and still be a part of our lives, it will just look a little different. The size and scale that we have been farming is not sustainable for our lives at this point. With two little ones and two full-time jobs, we have to take a step back.”19
Navigating member turnover, accommodating consumer preferences, delivering high-quality products, and planning for the unexpected all create additional concerns on top of the basic job of growing food and the essential task of making a viable life. Current statistics suggest that turnover of CSA shareholders is between 25 and 70 percent each year.20 Consequently, CSA operators must continuously market their organization and recruit members. These yearly fluctuations in membership come as a result of such issues as subscribers’ perception of the quality of products; convenience of subscribing, ordering, and pickup; and lack of knowledge regarding the common products grown locally and in each season. Market research points to the importance of word-of-mouth recruitment of new shareholders. A recent study among members of nineteen different CSAs in Indiana found that nearly 60 percent of the subscribers were first-timers, with 100 percent of participants closely knowing another CSA shareholder and 93.1 percent having learned about their current CSA by word-of-mouth.21
Individuals subscribe to CSAs for many reasons, and figuring those out is fundamental to maintaining a successful member base. The most obvious reason is fresh food. According to one CSA subscriber, “I really liked the food, the vegetables, especially the fruit[;] it was really great,” while another noted that he likes “the variety each week. There is something different each week, and she doesn’t overload us with the any one item. So there is a lot of variety. I also like that I can actually call the farmer at any point if there is something wrong. So, it’s very personal. I really like that. I like knowing the farmer.” Beyond food, many subscribers want to support local farmers and the local economy.22 Subscribers to CSAs value being able to develop a more intentional relationship with the farmer(s), to acquire an in-depth understanding of the farm and its practices, to gain a sense of community and belonging, and to participate in a growing trend among urban and suburban residents. Subscribers also value the fact that CSAs put them in a privileged position to acquire food items that are scarce in their area. Pasture-raised pork, free-range poultry, unusual squash, Southeast Asian greens, or other heirloom vegetables are examples in some areas. Finally, some CSA shareholders value the opportunity to cast a personal, consistent, and deep vote in support of their local food system.
Privilege and the CSA
It comes as no surprise, however, that CSA participation is not always easy. Subscribers leave CSAs for a number of reasons, including too much food, too little variety, too much variety, too many unfamiliar or unpalatable greens in the fall and spring “shoulder” seasons, and too little choice. This “too” variable presents a significant challenge at the core of CSAs. The seasonality of farming means long periods of less than optimal growing conditions that subscribers are not always prepared to endure. In the northern latitudes, the cooler months (mainly in April–June, but also September–November) can mean little variety and none of the big-draw vegetables like sweet corn and cantaloupes. The current industrial food model that provides consumers’ unlimited choices of produce throughout the year has pushed American food palates to want diversity and to balk at the monotony of the season’s staples. Being aware of this propensity and responding with a diversity of crops spaced appropriately throughout the growing season is fundamental to farmers’ pleasing many shareholders. Animal-based CSAs, such as meat or dairy, do not have the same challenges as produce CSAs given the nature of the products, their position on the menu, and the longer shelf life, particularly when value is added.
Another variable affecting CSA shareholder stability and retention is the internal competition farmers face with their other distribution points. Our survey of CSA subscribers in the Midwest indicated that they sometimes received vegetables from the CSA that were inferior to what was available from the same growers at the farmers’ market. In addition, longer-term subscribers sometimes perceive a decrease in quality as the size of a CSA grows. While farmers must manage the CSA and their distribution systems effectively in order to maintain adequate income to sustain the farm and themselves, they must consider how their efforts to grow can affect shareholder satisfaction and, subsequently, retention. Otherwise, they can undermine the stability of the entire program.
CSAs have long been critiqued for issues of privilege and exclusivity. In particular, education, wealth, and race appear in current research in a confluence of some of the most significant barriers to expanding CSAs. Education is one important disparity that points to other inequalities that defuse the potential of CSAs. A recent study of CSAs and farmers’ markets found, in part, that most customers had higher levels of educational achievement than the general population.23 This Indiana-based study found that 85.6 percent of the CSA participants surveyed had a bachelor’s degree, with 55.5 percent of them also having a graduate-level degree. Comparatively, only 22.7 percent of all Indiana residents in 2011 had a bachelor’s degree, with 8.3 percent holding a graduate-level degree. This disparity indicates the link between educational attainment, which correlates with socioeconomic status, and access to these local food venues. This circumstance is relevant beyond Indiana in that, nationwide, 28 percent of adult citizens held bachelor’s degree in the same period.24 Additionally, another recent study by Thomas Macais confirms that CSA members around Burlington, Vermont, generally have a higher level of education—and higher socioeconomic status—than the general population.25 What this means for the expansion of CSAs is that the distribution scheme is currently targeting only a fraction of the population that it could. What it means for social justice is that good food is mostly reaching those who already have access to excellent quality and quantities of comestibles.
More advanced education usually means greater income, which, when coupled together, supports greater access and customer participation.26 Clare Hinrichs argues that the face-to-face interaction and the community framework of CSAs and other direct-market local food venues compound the social inequalities that exist in the marketplace, creating barriers to participation for both the less educated and less wealthy.27 She argues that many CSAs and direct agricultural markets are comprised of “exclusive products and exclusive markets” that “involve social relations where the balance of power and privilege ultimately rests with well-to-do consumers.”28 Indeed, the theory of producer-to-consumer direct marketing rests on the premise that it provides an alternative to the one-size-fits-all mass production embraced by the dominant food system. However, as Hinrichs rightly notes, direct markets are not exempt from perpetuating inequity in income and access, even when they manage to shift the power around. As consumers with greater resources become empowered, an increasing number of marginalized consumers and break-even farmers may become disadvantaged.
In part, a class-bound system is supported by the strong role that social networks play in how CSAs are marketed and how people learn about the CSA in which they come to hold shares. According to our (2010) study in Indiana, one-third of subscribers learned about their CSA directly from a friend or coworker, while 14.6 percent learned about it through their social network via an email or Facebook. Additionally, 84.3 percent of CSA participants knew of a friend who also was a shareholder, with 49.2 percent knowing a coworker, and 48.2 percent knowing a family member who subscribed to a CSA. In total, 100 percent of CSA participants in the study had, at minimum, one other person they knew who also held a share in a CSA. This predominance of in-network growth is not surprising, because many CSAs use a grassroots, “organic” style of marketing that relies heavily on word-of-mouth and social networks to advertise and recruit shareholders.29 However, it does mean that like breeds like, and CSAs are potentially attracting only people who are like those already subscribed.
With its outsized role in US social relations, race becomes a prevailing factor in participation and recruitment. CSA participants in our Indiana study were overwhelmingly white (95.3 percent), even though a lesser portion (86.8 percent) of the state’s residents are white, according to the 2010 US Census. Participation in Indiana CSAs by people of color also showed important disparities: only 1.1 percent of participants identified as Asian, 0.7 percent as African American, and 0.7 percent as being of Hispanic descent. The census findings for the state population are 9.4 percent African American, 6.1 percent Hispanic or Latino, and 1.7 percent Asian. Scholars studying other locations have found similar rates of participation and note especially the underrepresentation of African Americans in these alternative food systems.30 CSAs, and local food more generally, are far from race-neutral as currently practiced and require purposeful effort to make them inclusive.31
Income is a key variable as well to improving food security and access through local foods.32 In our same Indiana study, 48.8 percent of CSA participants reported a household income at or above $90,000. Meanwhile, the median household income in Indiana that year was $47,697. Additionally, 81 percent of all CSA participants surveyed reported a household income at or above $45,000. In comparison, the median US household income level for 2010 was $51,914. John Polimeni and his colleagues conducted research that is one example among many that found similar patterns in participation. The researchers found that participants in Roxbury Biodynamic Farm’s CSA operation in Kinderhook, New York, showed similarly disproportionate participation, with 74.1 percent of participants having a household income greater than $40,000.
These four intertwined variables of privilege—education, social network, race, and income—have been noted consistently in the research literature as factors that constrain participation in CSAs by a more diverse cross-section of the population.33 Local and sustainable food advocates, too, are beginning to recognize the limitations of the current system and to address them by developing improvements on the classic CSA model.
While issues of privilege that shape much of the American experience likewise inform these and other alternative food venues, many innovative options for broadening participation in local food systems exist. CSAs, often perpetuating major economic and cultural challenges, also reveal that privilege. Their basis in social organization means that changes in CSAs can reflect and overcome significant exclusionary aspects of the larger culture. By addressing two or more variables at once, CSAs can evolve to be more than just another marketplace for the elite. CSAs of tomorrow, if they are to flourish, must adopt innovative strategies that invite new and different people to the table. Employing strategies such as alternative locations, fee structures, participant models, and educational venues will open accessibility and draw greater diversity, in greater numbers, to a local food experience that supports farms, farmers, communities, and public health.
CSAs of Tomorrow
Past CSAs relied upon small groups of individuals with convenient access to farms, who prioritized the support of local farms and food above other motives in food procurement. The result was good food for a privileged few, but most would argue that such selectiveness is the intent of the model. Rather, the earliest goals of community-supported agriculture, as Steven McFadden points out, were to bring community back into the food system while directly supporting the economic stability of small-scale farmers in the business of agriculture.34
Today farmers and community members collaborate to make CSAs more inclusive, accessible, and efficient by positioning them as part of the urban agriculture landscape and embedding them within existing institutions. Changes in federal food policy make that easier now by allowing small growers to accept government vouchers for food assistance, such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. In addition, food security organizations are partnering with local farmers to move surplus food and donations into the distribution system. These changes offer new opportunities to decrease economic barriers to participation in local food systems and benefit, as farmers can directly market to a wider share of the general public. With such developments, CSAs present a promising venue not only for the distribution of local foods but also for the rebirth of civic agriculture.
Alternative Payment Systems
CSA farmers looking for ways to expand access to their goods and services might consider innovative options for payment, alternative locations, and community-based education. Likely the simplest mechanism a farm can incorporate to increase access is alternative payment options. The drawback to this method is that the farmer does not receive 100 percent of the capital for the CSA before the growing season. However, an alternative payment scheme could be set up to allow several installments that begin in advance of the first delivery, continue through the height of the season, and end a month or more before the share season ends. Marlett Farm CSA, based on a small, sustainable farm in southern Indiana, offers two payment strategies for its shareholders. In the first option, payment for shares is received in full by March 1 for the season that begins in May. In the second option, payments come in four installments, forty dollars for a half share or eighty dollars for a full share, with the final installment being paid on July 1, six weeks before the end of the summer share season. Only 12.5 percent of the Marlett Farm CSA shareholders actually take advantage of the installment plan, with most paying in full by early March; however, having the installment option means participants with less flexibility to frontload their food costs can still participate.
A Progressive Fee
Another method for expanding low-income participants is through a progressive fee system that subsidizes shares for those who might otherwise not be able to afford to participate. This means, effectively, that those who can pay knowingly pay more so that those who can’t pay less. For example, say a farm had budgeted their ten-week CSA at $160 for a half share that feeds two adults and $320 for a full share that feeds a family. Wanting to offer some shares at subsidized prices might mean raising those prices to $180 for a half share and $360 for a full share. Collecting the equivalent of fifty total full shares at the higher prices means this farm is able to offer an additional twenty-five subscriptions at a price as low as $80 instead of $180. The farm still covers its needs but also invites in more low-income shareholders. In order to be transparent, the farm then publicizes this subsidy program, detailing that $20 from each half share and $40 from each full share is used to assist individuals and families who can demonstrate a financial need. Such a plan may in turn attract full-price participants who highly value the community component of CSA.
Other methods for subsidizing low-income shares include sliding-scale payment systems, in which different subscribers pay different fees based on income; grants and donations from organized programs and generous benefactors; and collaborations with community organizations that help cover the farm’s or the subscriber’s unpaid costs.35 In Eugene, Oregon, the Willamette Farm and Food Coalition works with several faith communities and multiple CSAs in order to assist individuals in the payment of their shares.36
Other CSAs organize a work-food exchange (also known as working share or volunteering). This kind of arrangement can benefit both customers and farmers. A recent study of West Virginia specialty fruit and vegetable growers found that one of their greatest challenges was finding enough farm labor.37 This is a particular challenge for specialty crop farms because the labor tends to be more intensive and hands-on. Thus, some CSAs have instituted payment options that allow shareholders to exchange their work on the farm for the payment of their share. Often a farm accepting these arrangements must decide how many people they can use and prioritize applicants by financial need. Homestead Organics Farm Inc. and Gallatin Valley Botanicals, both of Montana, offer opportunities for CSA memberships through a work exchange. Gallatin offers a 50 percent discount for members who volunteer forty-five hours over the course of eighteen weeks, while Homestead offers a full share to participants with enough need and time for labor, effectively allowing an arrangement in which no money changes hands.38
Institutional CSAs
Though one of the greatest benefits of CSAs to farmers is the early full payment of CSA shares, a close second is knowing that they have a dedicated group of customers week after week. Recently, private and nonprofit organizations have organized access for their members by developing CSAs through institutional channels. A CSA at the University of Richmond (Virginia) offers one example. In this case, the CSA is organized by the institution, using a variety of farmers from the local area to put together the products the university’s participants want. The university provides an established network of potential CSA shareholders, has the accounting system in place to make automatic payroll deductions and payments, and provides a centralized delivery point for the distribution of the weekly shares. The cost of the CSA share is $450, and University of Richmond employees can have the amount automatically deducted from their pay over a fourteen-week period, amounting to just $32.15 per week.39 Though farmers do not receive a full payment for shares up front, they do know that payments will be regular and reliable.
Alternative Locations and Urban Growing
A major factor limiting participation in CSAs is the location of the pickup and drop-off points. What is convenient for farmers may not always be convenient for customers—particularly for those who live in areas not served by local farms. Much of the time CSAs offer on-the-farm pickup that generally is not on a public transportation line or is reachable only by a time-consuming route. Other times CSAs offer delivery points in suburban or urban areas that are convenient to more affluent clientele. A simple strategy for making CSAs more geographically accessible is by increasing the number of drop-off locations and locating them along public transportation lines.
The Genesee Valley Organic CSA of Rochester, New York, addresses these issues with a modified ride-share system that pairs new members who have transportation limitations with veteran CSA shareholders who have cars. The benefits to this arrangement are several. New members gain assistance with transportation needs. Veteran members can help orient new members to the policies, practices, and culture of a CSA.40 Ride buddies can share recipes and other knowledge of food culture. Farmers gain a larger pool of subscribers, and finally, the community of local food becomes more diverse.
Educating in and for the CSA
During James’s first year running a CSA, he sent out mid-summer evaluations asking for feedback about our produce. Among many favorable responses was one person’s comment that he did not like lettuce, spinach, arugula, or, indeed, any spring greens. That customer’s preference presented a bit of a problem at a time of year when little else grows in Indiana. Other customers were adamant that they wanted spinach salads with cucumbers or cilantro along with their tomatoes, both combinations presenting significant challenges in a climate that heats up early. These consumers, like many others, were accustomed to the US industrial food system that offers nearly everything most of the time. They had developed a homogenized palate that ignored the nuances of season, culture, and region.
Failing to accommodate local palates can also present a problem. For example, grits and sweet tea are quite common in the South, with stewed greens and shuck beans in central Appalachia, crab cakes in Maryland, and pasties (of the turnip variety) in northern Michigan. When a CSA’s offerings diverge from the preferred local menu, customers can become disgruntled.
However, CSAs, and farmers’ markets as well, offer a season-long opportunity to educate shoppers. Recipes for cooking and preserving, tips for quick cleaning, and sample home menus can be slipped into customers’ or shareholders’ baskets. Links to website forums that trade ideas among local consumers and post dates of workdays and potlucks on the farm are easy ways to share knowledge. Customers may welcome some advance notice for how their diet is going to diversify as the season progresses, perhaps beginning with a variety of greens such as spinach, lettuce, and kale; followed by early peas, collards, and kohlrabi; and then a little later by summer squash and zucchini; and winding up with tomatoes and peppers, pumpkins and popcorn. The challenge to making recommendations is that not all people cook, eat, or even enjoy the same items equally. If kohlrabi is apt to generate questions like “What’s that alien life form in the refrigerator?” then the farmers’ job is to educate potential customers before a season starts and shareholders throughout the long summer.
Many successful, education-oriented vendors and CSAs inform their consumers and shareholders by providing recipes for the week’s share items along with common ingredients found in most kitchens. Advice on how to prepare both common and unique items fosters consumer happiness, return business, and positive word-of-mouth advertisement, particularly if a farm provides out-of-the-ordinary items.
Of course, the best-case scenario for increasing demographic diversity and accessibility for any CSA likely includes several of these strategies. The particular arrangements that are desirable will differ for each individual CSA and the population it serves, or could potentially serve. What we do know from the research and our own experience is that the more intentional one is in developing an inclusive CSA, the more likely one is to form a diverse and vibrant community.
In thirty short years, CSAs have become a valued venue in local food systems and a useful tool for economic stability on small farms. But they also have revealed that local food participates in the systemic inequities that pervade American culture. Can CSAs of the future move beyond marketing to fully embrace a role in building a diverse, socially just community? The willingness of CSAs to adopt alternative models for payment, location, and inclusion, and their willingness to share the successes among them, will help them have a significant impact in growing local foods across the landscape—urban, suburban, and rural alike. Redesigned, CSAs can be part of a movement “to extend basic, healthy linkages” across communities in ways that support the public’s continued interest in knowing where their food comes from, how it is grown, and how they may engage in restoring both a sense of community and the healthfulness of the food system.41
Notes
1. USDA, “Community Supported Agriculture,” USDA National Agricultural Library, http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/pubs/csa/csa.shtml.
2. Wikipedia, “Community-Supported Agriculture,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community-supported_agriculture.
3. Indian Line Farm, “Community Supported Agriculture at Indian Line Farm,” http://www.indianlinefarm.com/csa.html.
4. Steven McFadden, “The History of Community Supported Agriculture, Part I,” Rodale Institute, http://rodaleinstitute.org/the-history-of-community-supported-agriculture-part-i.
5. Ibid.
6. Natasha Bowens, “CSA Is Rooted in Black History,” Mother Earth News, http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/csas-rooted-in-black-history-zbcz1502.aspx.
7. Melea Press and Eric Arnould, “How Does Organizational Identification Form?” A Consumer Behavior Perspective,” Journal of Consumer Research 38 (2011): 650–66.
8. Steven McFadden, The Call of the Land: An Agrarian Primer for the 21st Century, 2nd ed. (Bedford, MA: Norlights Press, 2011), 80.
9. Biodynamic Association, “Community Supported Agriculture: An Introduction to CSA,” https://www.biodynamics.com/content/community-supported-agriculture-introduction-csa.
10. Evenstar Farm, “What Is a CSA?” http://www.evenstarfarm.net/whatIs.html.
11. Jill Perry and Scott Franzblau, Local Harvest: A Multiform CSA Handbook (Signature Book Printing, 2010), http://www.sare.org/Learning-Center/SARE-Project-Products/Northeast-SARE-Project-Products/Local-Harvest.
12. Maple Valley Farm, http://maplevalley.howardfamilyenterprise.com/index.php, November 2, 2016.
13. Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, “Raw Milk Nation,” http://www.farmtoconsumer.org/raw-milk-nation-interactive-map.
14. Ibid.
15. Groundwork Farms, “Prices and Shares,” http://www.groundworkfarms.com/prices-and-share-descriptions.
16. Evening Song Farm Facebook Page, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Evening-Song-Farm/134669806604503.
17. WE Farm closed its website in fall 2015, and this page is no longer available.
18. A notice of WE Farm’s closing is available on the webpage, “Last ‘Market’ Call!!” http://us3.campaign-archive2.com/?u=5675cf88530d6d486fca298bd&id=ec610f7b42. A legacy description of the farm resides at City of Bloomington, “About WE Farm: The Wayne-Egenolf Farm,” https://bloomington.in.gov/documents/viewDocument.php?document_id=7437.
19. Laura Beth Egenolf, “Meat Sales and Family,” WE Farm: The Wayne-Egenolf Farm, http://us3.campaign-archive2.com/?u=5675cf88530d6d486fca298bd&id=8394e67820.
20. North Carolina Cooperative Extension, “Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Resource Guide for Farmers,” http://growingsmallfarms.ces.ncsu.edu/growingsmallfarms-csaguide; Katherine L. Adam, “Community Gardening,” ATTRA—National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service, 2011, www.attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/download.php?id=351; K. Brandon Lang, “Expanding Our Understanding of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA): An Examination of Member Satisfaction,” Journal of Sustainable Agriculture 26, no. 2 (2005): 61–79.
21. Farmer et al., “Agrileisure: Farmers’ Markets, CSAs, and the Privilege in Eating Local,” Journal of Leisure Research 46, no. 3 (2014): 321.
22. Ibid.
23. Farmer et al., “Tale of Four Farmers Markets,” 15.
24. United States Census Bureau, “State and County QuickFacts,” http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html.
25. Thomas Macias, “Working toward a Just, Equitable, and Local Food System: The Social Impact of Community-Based Agriculture,” Social Science Quarterly 89, no. 5 (2008): 1086–1101.
26. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employment Projections,” http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm.
27. Clare C. Hinrichs, “Embeddedness and Local Food Systems: Notes on Two Types of Direct Agricultural Markets,” Journal of Rural Studies 16 (2000): 295–303.
28. Laura B. DeLind, “Market Niches, ‘Cul de sacs,’ and Social Context: Alternative Systems of Food Production,” Culture and Agriculture 13, no. 47 (1993): 7–12, 8; Hinrichs, “Embeddedness and Local Food Systems,” 301.
29. Macais, “Working toward a Just, Equitable, and Local Food System.”
30. Julie Guthman, “‘If They Only Knew’: Color Blindness and Universalism in California Alternative Food,” Professional Geographer 60, no. 3 (2008): 387–97.
31. Mary E. Thomas, “‘I Think It’s Just Natural’: The Spatiality of Racial Segregation at a US High School,” Environment and Planning A 37, no. 7 (2005): 1233–48; Arun Saldanha, “Reontologising Race: The Machinic Geography of Phenotype,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24, no. 1 (2006): 9–24; Richard H. Schein, “Race and Landscape in the United States,” in Landscape and Race in the United States, edited by Richard H. Schein, 1–21 (New York: Routledge, 2006); Guthman, “‘If They Only Knew.’”
32. Community Food Security Coalition, “What Is Community Food Security Coalition?” http://foodsecurity.org/about-us.
33. Clare C. Hinrichs and Kathy S. Kremer, “Social Inclusion in a Midwest Local Food System Project,” Journal of Poverty 6, no. 1 (2002): 65–90.
34. McFadden, Call of the Land.
35. Cristin B. Forbes and Alison H. Harmon, “Buying into Community Supported Agriculture: Strategies for Overcoming Income Barriers,” Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition 2, no. 2–3 (2008): 65–79.
36. Ibid.; Willamette Farm and Food Coalition, “Finding Local Food: Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Programs,” http://www.lanefood.org/csa-programs.php. Accessed November 27, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20160517132632/http://www.lanefood.org/csa-programs.php.
37. James R. Farmer et al., Overcoming the Market Barriers to Organic Production in West Virginia (Morgantown, WV: Downstream Strategies, 2013).
38. Forbes and Harmon, “Buying into Community Supported Agriculture.”
39. University of Richmond, “Bountiful Benefit: New Benefit Allows Employees to Purchase Local Produce through Payroll Deductions,” June 3, 2010, http://news.richmond.edu/features/article/-/1631/new-benefit-allows-employees-to-purchase-local-produce-through-payroll-deductions.html.; University of Richmond, “Employee Wellness,” http://employeewellness.richmond.edu.
40. Hunger Action Network of New York State, “Community Supported Agriculture,” http://www.hungeractionnys.org/commfood_csa.htm. Accessed November 27, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20080703152526/http://www.hungeractionnys.org/commfood_csa.htm.
41. McFadden, “History of Community Supported Agriculture.”