In response to an increasingly globalised food system, and the corresponding, social, environmental and health problems which it poses, communities around the world have been developing a different vision for food production and distribution. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a concept which encourages local, environmentally sustainable food production, and which supports both farmers and ‘consumers’ alike.
The CSA concept originated in the 1960s in Switzerland and Japan, where consumers interested in safe food and farmers seeking stable markets for their crops joined together in economic partnerships. Called “teikei” in Japan, it translates to “putting the farmers’ face on food”.
CSA is a partnership of mutual commitment between a farm (producer) and a community of supporters (consumers) which provides a direct economic and social link between the production and consumption of food. Although CSA’s take many forms, the essence is that supporters cover all, or part of a farm’s yearly operating budget by purchasing a share of the season’s harvest – up front. There is no agent or distributor between the customer and the farmer. All subscriber funds are directed to the Farm or activities, which support the community-supported agriculture Co-operative.
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a concept which encourages local, environmentally sustainable food production, and which supports both farmers and ‘consumers’ alike
CSA members make a commitment to support the farm throughout the season, and assume the costs, risks and bounty of growing food along with the farmer. Members help pay for seeds, fertilizer, water, equipment maintenance, labour, etc. In return, the farm provides, to the best of its ability, a healthy supply of seasonal fresh produce throughout the growing season. Farmers can determine with certainty what to plant based on the growing plan arranged withthe group. Becoming a member creates a responsible relationship between people and the food they eat, the land on which it is grown and the people who grow it.
The CSA movement has been growing rapidly in the US and in Europe, with over 1000 CSA projects in the US and Canada by the early 1990’s. It is not proposed as the only alternative way to ‘do’ food, but it is a model that has proven to work for many thousands of communities and farms around the world.
Sharing risks of food production
One of the main benefits to farmers of CSA projects is that the risks of food production are shared with the people who benefit. Under the industrial, and increasingly globalised model of agriculture, farmers are subject to the whims of ‘the market’, which can be evenmore unpredictable than the weather or other natural disasters. With large mono-crops in particular, a single ‘event’, be it a market price drop, a hail storm, flood, insect plague or late frost, can often be enough to put a small farmer out of business. Consumers on the otherhand, remain oblivious to the problem – they are still able to purchase their tomatoes, or whatever – and probably wouldn’t even notice that this time they come from Spain instead of from the Brisbane valley.
As well as helping to share the risks of farming, up-front payment can also help to reduce the burden of finance on farmers. True, this does place a burden of finance onto the people who eat the food, however, there are a number of ways of doing this in an equitable way that does not disadvantage low income people.
While it seems like a big change for people to start sharing the risks of food production, we already do pay many of the costs associated with insuring crops from risk under the current farming system – only these costs are often hidden. For example, in order to offset the risk of crop failures, farmers are often encouraged to use increased amounts of pesticides or other industrial farming technologies, which, in theory, eliminate some of the variations of natural systems. The broader community pays the longer term costs of pesticide use and industrial agriculture, through such environmental impacts as biodiversity loss, soil erosion, and nutrient run-off into waterways.
The need to eliminate risk is one of the key driversof the ‘green revolution’ and the industrialisation of agriculture, in which nature is seen as a ‘nuisance’ to be controlled, rather than as the source of life, which we know it to be. In this way, the sharing of risk which occurs though CSA goes directly to the real issues of environmental sustainability in agriculture, by providing a model of ‘risk management’ which is based on community co-operation, rather than control of nature.
CSA agreements can greatly help the economic viability of small scale, organic farms, which in turn helps these farmers to survive and can stop the conversion of agricultural lands to urban sprawl in and around cities.
How do CSA’s work in practice?
Generally CSA’s develop around an existing farm and operate in a way that the farmer maintains responsibility for the management of their land and all growing aspects. The CSA supporters manage the initiation of new members, payment collection, and distribution of the produce. These responsibilities can shift depending on how therelationships develop. In some cases the farmer may want to become involved in the distribution and promotion aspects of a CSA, or the supporters become more involved in farm activities like planting and picking.
Some CSA’s work with a group of farmers in order to achieve more diversity of produce – this may mean one farmer suppliers the vegetables, another fruit crops and another dairy products. With such arrangements small farmers wouldn’t have to devote land to extensive low value crops such as pumpkins or sweet corn and a larger farm wouldn’t have to dedicate time to labour intensive crops like carrots or herbs. It is obviously important to recognise the different skills and soil required for different types of farming.
We’d like to invite you to be part of this vision – to rejoice in slow food – in your own community, with your own friends and family, and to be part of creating a just and sustainable future.
CSA Shares
CSA’s generally involve shares – where one share is equivalent to one season’s worth of produce. A ‘season’ can be defined according to local growing conditions – it may be 3, 4 or 6 months or whatever the group decides.
People (consumers) purchase shares at the start of theseason and this money is then given to the farmer to help offset the costs of planting etc. The farmer and shareholders then work out a growing plan – in accordance with people’s tastes and the farmer’s ability to grow. As food production starts, the shareholders then receive a stream of farm fresh vegetables (usually as a ‘mixed box’) commensurate with the value of their share. The options for setting the share price are broadly based on either the farmer’s current market prices, approximate market valueor cost plus an agreed margin.
A 1992 study into CSA in the US and Canada, found that most had between 35 and 200 members, and the average CSA farm was about 35 acres. A typical box of food held 2-5 kg of food per week, or enough for 2 or 3 people. Prices ran from US$10 to US$35 per week, with the average share costing US$346 for 22 weeks of food. (The range for memberships was between US$225 and US$500.)
Matching produce with consumers tastes seems to be the biggest challenge. Shareholders can be put off by wastage if they are given too much of something or a vegetable that they are unfamiliar with and have trouble using. A number of approaches have been taken to ensure that shareholders remain satisfied with the system, these include recipes for unusualor abundant produce, self-serve models so that people choose exactly what they want, and subscriber credits (whereby subscribers are given a number of credits at the beginning of the season and can take whatever they want, up to a weekly credit limit. Produce that is overly abundant may be worth half a credit, while popular items and those in short supply are worth a full credit).
Distribution of the food can happen in a few different ways, depending on how close the farms are to the city. Where farms arelocated hours away, produce is usually brought in to a central area either picked up by supporters or dropped off by the farmer.
If there is a common understanding among people who have been involved with CSA, it is that there is no single formula. Each group that gets started has to assess its own goals, skills and resources, and then proceed from that point. Most CSA’s (in the US and Europe) have been started by farmers, but many have been started by various community, consumer and church groups.
The FoE Just Food group have written a publication “Towards a Community Supported Agriculture« which will be available at the end of January. We are also planning to organise tours to local farms to discuss the possibility of setting up a CSA in Brisbane. We’retrying to articulate a vision for food – slow food rather than fast food, grown in the local area, rather than transported from the other side of the planet. A vision in which food forms an integral part in the fabric of a community, as a kind of ‘socialglue’, connecting people to each other and to the earth.
We’d like to invite you to be part of this vision – to rejoice in slow food – in your own community, with your own friends and family, and to be part of creating a just and sustainable future.
If there is a common understanding among people who have been involved with CSA, it is that there is no single formula.
If you’re interested in being part of the farm tours, getting involved in a CSA or being part of the Just food project,
please contact the FoE office:
ph (07) 3846 5793
email: [email protected]