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  • From: KAKerby AT aol.com
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Market-farming] what's a CSA? - 2nd try
  • Date: Thu, 3 May 2012 23:59:48 -0400 (EDT)

Good evening everyone.  One of the emails I tried to send earlier today, which didn't post, a lot of you will have gotten already on the CSAFarmers list.  But for those of you who aren't on that particular list, I wanted to share it here too.
 
There was a conversation on that list a few weeks ago, about coming up with a definition of "CSA" that we can share with customers. Toward that end, a number of people posted their definition of a CSA, and I offered to compile the definitions into something that could be put into any given farm's marketing material.  The following text is the result of that combined effort. 
 
I also came up with some working definitions for other food distribution methods, and how they differ from each other.  I'll have to send the language for the other distribution methods separately.  I'll also post the whole thing as a PDF doc to our farm website, and make it available for download.  I hope and encourage folks to continue to refine the definitions.
Kathryn Kerby
frogchorusfarm.com
Snohomish, WA
Ruminations - essays on the farming life at frogchorusfarm.com/weblog.html
 

What is a CSA?

Community Supported Agriculture is a term which is used by farmers and consumers both, to describe an alternative to the current conventional practice of buying and selling via brokers and other middle-men.  The term comes from an approach to marketing where the farmer forges a direct relationship with a group of local customers, such that the community has immediate access to food and the farmer has immediate access to customers.  While CSAs can vary on some details, they usually feature most if not all of the following criteria:

1)       a one-on-one relationship between farmer and consumer, where both parties get to know each other, and each other’s concerns and goals for food production, quality and access. 

2)       A subscription arrangement of some kind, such that the consumer knows in advance what variety and amount of products he or she will receive, and the farmer knows in advance what to grow, and how much of it, throughout the year.

3)       A payment arrangement such that the consumer either pays in advance at a discount, or agrees to pay a certain amount per week.  These rates are often cheaper than the consumer would pay for the same quality of product at a grocery store or farmers market, and both approaches give the farmer some guarantee of weekly and/or seasonal income.

4)       An opportunity or expectation for the consumer to come to the farm to see first-hand how things are grown and raised.  These visits might be to pick up weekly boxes of produce, or for regular work parties, or for member days to celebrate events such as planting and harvesting.

5)       A formal or informal guarantee that the products will be the freshest possible.  Most CSAs work on a weekly delivery or pickup schedule, and as a result most of the produce sold will have been harvested within a few days of that schedule.  This does not apply to all products, because some products (such as honey, cheeses, and meats) are either harvested infrequently throughout the year, or need to age prior to sale, or have longer shelf-lives which allow for sales distributed throughout the year.

6)       Many CSA farms are managed in sustainable, natural, and/or organic ways.  The personal relationships forged between CSA growers and buyers works to encourage all parties to discuss concerns, goals and priorities, for various food safety issues.  Some CSAs will actively include consumers in the farm’s day to day decision-making process.

One fundamental feature of many CSAs is the concept of shared risk.  By having pre-paid subscriptions for each year’s produce, the farmer and customers all share the risk for crop failures.  A corollary to that feature is diversification - most CSA farms will offer a wide variety of products so that if one crop fails, others are still available.  This philosophy seems very simple but it forms the core of the CSA concept.  By diversifying into lesser- known products, farmers can better tailor their plantings and products to match their particular farm’s micro-climates.  They also can offer products which would either be so fragile, or aren’t in great enough demand, that there are no conventional outlets.   Consumers in turn gain a much greater awareness of the threats to any given farm’s yearly production of foods, and their subscriptions help ensure the farm’s continued survival even in the face of crop failure.  Yet those customers thereby also receive products at reasonable cost, which they would never be able to find in conventional markets at any price.  This diversification is one of the features applauded by both farmer and buyer, as one of the features which sets CSAs apart from all other farm product marketing options.
 
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