Community Supported Agriculture: The Concept

In light of the current agricultural crisis, concerned citizens and agriculturalists have responded by adopting an alternative farming philosophy called Community Supported Agriculture. This philosophy addresses the agricultural crisis not only as an ecological concern, but also as a threat to sustainable communities and healthy people. In his classic text The Unsettling of America, Wendell Berry defines the ecological and agricultural crisis as the symptom of a malady in three aspects of our lives--a crisis of character, a crisis of culture and a failing paradigm for agriculture. The Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement takes into consideration all of these failings. CSA farms produce a variety of crops depending on geographic location and needs/desires of consumers. Usually a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, flowers, and herbs are among crops available to consumers on CSA farms.

The CSA movement began 18 years ago in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and has been building momentum ever since. There are now over 1,700 CSA farms in the United States. Steve McFadden, a prominent voice in the CSA movement researched the incipience of this alternative paradigm. Based upon writings by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, two farms began production in 1986 with the desire to develop a local economy where healthy food would be produced, consumed, and profits returned to the local community. This underlying desire has since been built upon and the framework for a new, localized form of agriculture has emerged.

CSA FARMS: AN ALTERNATIVE PARADIGM

The benefits of partaking in a CSA community are numerous. By paying a set amount at the beginning of the growing season (May thru October), the shareholder agrees to support the CSA farm in return for receiving a share of the produce each week. This upfront payment gives the farm adequate capital to avoid taking out costly loans and falling into the cycle of mortgage and debt. But more than this, the farmer and the consumer enter into a trust relationship. The consumer is accepting a certain amount of risk--there could be inclement weather, an abundance of pests, a drought—and in return is supporting a sustainable farm practice that is ecologically sustainable, socially equitable and economically viable for both producer and community.

CSA farming pays particular attention to three concepts: SCALE, SCOPE, and SOURCE

SCALE
Unlike industrial agriculture which has recently adopted so-called “organic” farming practices, CSA farms take into consideration that healthful farming is more than the ABSENCE of toxic chemicals—it is the PRESENCE of sustainability. It is a positive farming practice that does not seek to leave things out, but instead tries to keep everything in. Part of this philosophy is an attention to scale. There is no universal CSA method. It is a place-based practice completely dependent on the ecological and community needs of the specific bioregion. The more the scale of a farming operation is expanded, the more diluted the intentionality, the less effectual the site-specific farming practices, the more like work and the less like community a farm becomes. Agrarian Wendell Berry notes that in small local communities “we share the fate of the place where knowledge is applied.” Most CSA farms are small and diverse and involve the dedication of a considerable amount of manual labor. These farming practices would be ineffective on a large scale. If CSA farming is about meeting the needs of local people, preserving a healthy ecosystem, and providing a fulfilling lifestyle for agriculturalists—then large-scale farming is antithetical to this purpose. The larger the scale the less personal, the less attentive, the more insulated from impacts a farm operation becomes. In short, it is no longer a CSA farm.

At Guidestone Farm, a 50-member CSA in Colorado where I worked during the 2003 season, we produced raw milk through a cow share program much like the CSA model for vegetables. Raw milk is a healthful and ethical alternative to pasteurized, homogenized, factory farm dairy products produced by the dairy industry. We had a waiting list nearly two years long of locals who wanted cow shares. Guidestone is a 150-acre farm, ten acres under cultivation and rotation and the rest growing hay and alfalfa for the raw milk dairy. This amount of land can sustain a herd of 25 to 30 cattle. The season I worked at Guidestone we had eleven cows milking; this provided enough milk for 85 cow share members. Many potential customers would ask why we didn’t expand since the demand for our product was so high. And the answer is simple. Caring for and milking a herd of 25 Jersies is manageable for a 12-member community of farmers. There is an intense amount of labor and daily practice involved in milk production. With 25 cows we were kept busy always—milking, skimming, pouring, packing, feeding, cleaning—but the work never became oppressive. There was always enough time to rest and look about you, to go for a swim and stand awhile in the shade on a hot afternoon. 25 cows is a lifestyle for this community, expand the scale and our work would have become monotony, drudgery. The idea behind CSA is to have many small farms like Guidestone, each taking on a project just big enough that they can do their work well and with joy.

There are conservation farming practices that large-scale agriculturalists can employ. Here in the midwest the two main environmental concerns are erosion and nonpoint source water pollution. An excellent method of erosion control in these midwestern flatlands is no-till farming. Reducing tillage and incorporating perrenial crops into farm systems markedly improves top soil retension. However there is a trade-off in adopting no-till farming methods. On large-scale farms controlling weeds in a big issue. Farmers do this by tilling or by incorporating genetically modified crops (such as Roundup Ready Corn™) and using pesticides and herbicides. Thus, a no-till farmer is able to control erosion, but does so at the cost of organic, unmodified production. As mentioned before, the accumulation of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers in groundwater and riverine systems has its own set of serious repercussions on ecological integrity, not to mention the loss of genetic diversity due to genetic modification. While it is important that large-scale producers adopt conservation methods, these methods are still not sustainable in the larger sense of the word. CSA farms can avoid becoming trapped between two unfriendly options--pesticide use or top soil loss--because their production scale is small enough to allow human labor to combat weed eradication. CSA farming values human labor as an integral part of the production of food. The less mechanized a farm operation is, the more likely that is conserving resources and avoiding the quagmire of large-scale monocropping. However, picking weeds and bugs off of plants by hand is not feasible, economical or enjoyable on a large-scale.

SCOPE
While the scale of CSA farming is appropriate to the needs and capabilities of the farmers and consumers, its scope is vast and expansive. It is vision that can see interconnection extending across the globe that leads to small-scale agriculture. In hopes of living sustainably in a specific bioregion one must allow their scope to see the high level of throughput involved in our everyday products—particularity products imported from other countries. It is a broad scope that leads to the third element of CSA farming: source.

SOURCE
CSA farming attempts to stay as close to the source as it can—it uses local knowledge and resources to produce food that will be eaten locally and that will benefit the local economy. Wendell Berry notes in his book Citizenship Papers, “The goal of the intelligent farmer, who desires long term success in farming, is to adapt his work to his place.” Berry notes that local adaptation requires us to answer two questions: (1) What is the nature—the need and opportunity—of the local economy and (2) what is the nature of the place? CSA farming seeks to adapt to the local landscape without the input of expensive and questionable technologies not designed for the needs of specific regions and situations. By trying for self-sufficiency at a local level CSA farms use resources native to the region. By being attentive to scale, scope, and source CSA farms work toward sustainable communities and ecological preservation.

Trauger Groh and Steve McFadden illuminate an important distinction between profit motivations and economic motivations in sustainable farming. It is the goal of CSA farming to create regenerative farms that are the main source of production for local consumption and to use local resources in that production.

“Many things we do today in farming are profitable but uneconomic. For example, nowadays strawberries are frequently grown in California for the Northeast market, even when those berries could be grown in the Northeast itself. The grower, the trucker, and the retailer will all eventually make a profit, but there will be a hidden loss. The amount of energy expended to grow and transport the strawberries to market far exceeds the amount of energy they will yield when they are consumed. There is a far higher input than output. Ultimately, society must cover this cost in some way. Thus, the profit of a few becomes the loss of many. Production is truly economic when it is done with the lowest possible input, and when the output exceeds the input. AS we enter an era of dwindling resources, many people are recognizing the need for the farms of tomorrow to be truly economic: to renew themselves while creating a consumable surplus without the input of substances from off the farm, and with a reasonable expenditure of labor and energy” (Groh 1997).

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