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  • From: "BarbaraJ" <jbmckillip AT mesanetworks.net>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] interesting read on CSAs
  • Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 12:22:42 -0700

 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, February 28, 2010 9:14 AM
Subject: Re: [Market-farming] interesting read on CSAs

Cool name  for your farm, John.  Is that from the Monkey Wrench Gang?
I posted the CSA article to another group and got lots of emails from consumer members crabbing about the same consumer complaints in the text.  Reminds me again that about half the work of a CSA is education of the customer.

Shawnee, zone 5 and weary of explaining about what's in the box and why it costs what it costs and wishing I could say, "just eat your greens dammit, and let some passionate, committed  grower make 75 cents an hour."


Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 09:00:06 -0500
From: john AT seldomseenfarm.com
To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [Market-farming] interesting read on CSAs

I think that article raises a number of valid issues with the CSA model.  If you're dealing with a subscription/drop site model, it is likely more expensive to run than a similarly sized farmers market.  But there are many benefits to cash flow and planning, and then the intangibles. 

In our area there is a business running home delivery of organic foods and products.  They have ~1000 members or more, and that is necessary to make home delivery possible.  They buy some from produce growers, but use industrial organic as a primary source.  The boxes are customizable, and you can add any number of different products to the delivery.  The business has grown very quickly, but they are not limited by the scale of production like a farm would be.  Veggies alone would not be enough to justify home delivery over a wide area.  You would need to get your $/delivery up to the 35-50$ range to be worth while. 

According to the study, 36 percent of members cited supermarket withdrawal as their reason for leaving their CSA program, characterized as “the wrong vegetables in the wrong quantities at the wrong time.”  In other words, consumers wanted more control over the food they purchase.  Perhaps this wouldn’t big such a big deal if it weren’t for the fact that these people self-selected into CSA programs in the first place.  Apparently, those reasons couldn’t overcome the inconveniences of the CSA format.

Has anyone played around with customized CSA boxes, especially with a web based front end (farmigo.com)?  Something that would allow members to customize their boxes and automate some of the administrative functions.  There are a couple web suites out there that will do that, but they're asking =>2% of gross sales, and that is more than I'm willing to pay.  A friend of mine with PHP and MySQL experience is trying to rough in a web based store that will do this.  Our plan was to cherry pick code out of OsCommerce and modify it to work within ordering CSA framework.  I would love it if there was an open source solution.     


John

--
Seldom Seen Farm
Danville, IN
317.509.7828


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