Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

You're basically claiming that all the typical features of a CSA are not
necessary to a CSA, yet everything I've seen researching CSAs online shows
these typical practices: advance payment, boxes with some items they're not
familiar with ("mystery boxes"), and perhaps some discount for volunteer
help. It's not a CSA without prepayment, whether all at the start or in
stages. Just paying for what they want when they get it is the farmers
market arrangement, not a CSA, no matter how you try to explain it. How
obvious can that get?

It can be cheaper than storebought organic, but not for customers don't
even use some of what they get or give it away. BTW my prices are also
cheaper than Whole Paycheck. And you may not rub elbows with the poor, but
generally they can't afford to pay for food until they need to eat it - not
one to five months in advance. And the majority of us who don't think of
ourselves as poor still live paycheck to paycheck (or retirement deposit). 

I said grocery stores could't stay in business selling "mystery boxes" of
produce and neither could farmers markets. That's too obvious to argue, but
you manage to anyway. 

My farmers market has all these elements of grower-customer relationship
that your CSA has. The point you seem to pass over is the most obvious:
only a tiny minority of shoppers can or will pay ahead of time for boxes of
uncertain produce, and only those with income above week to week living
expenses. That's no way to reach the mass of customers in this country. In
other words CSA is not scalable. The farmers market is. People are used to
paying for their food when they get it, and picking it out by looking at it
and touching. I'd be crazy to ask them to pay months in advance and without
even being sure what they're getting. I don't have a pool of wealthy
patrons who throw money around to feel good about supporting me. 

How you market is your business. I won't do a CSA on principle. 

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 12/15/2007 at 5:29 PM David Inglis wrote:

>Paul,
>>CSA of course reaches primarily
>> those who can afford to pay in advance, and from reports of other CSAs
it
>> appears some subscribers don't use all they get and some don't even pick
>up
>> on schedule after paying in advance. 
>That can be the case but is often not. Prepayment is an often mentioned
but
>not a required feature of CSA's.[ In my analysis the ONLY required
features
>of CSA are some form of farm membership or affiliation, that the
>arrangement
>between the producer and final consumer is direct, transparent and be by a
>mutual, and preferably written, agreement, ie contractual]. All other
>features are flexible and can be worked out by agreement between consumer
>and producer, this includes payments. Most offer flexible payment plans. A
>farmers market, while working for many of  both the consumers and
producers
>that use them, does not meet any of these criterion. That does not mean
>they
>are inferior in any way, but they are just not equivalent.
>A CSA's product is usually far cheaper than store bought organic and is
>therefore a good option for the poor. The reasons for this are complex but
>a
>short version would be that CSA's can shift wholesale quantities of
produce
>at prices [in the aggregate] that are higher than wholesale[ good for the
>producer] but less than retail [good for the consumer]. Also many
economies
>of production and distribution can come into play such as: eliminating
>bagging, weighing, banding etc The benefits of these economies are usually
>shared in the community of the producer and consumer. If you want to level
>a
>criticism on behalf of the poor you would be better to point out that the
>least expensive option, on farm distribution, is only available to those
>with access to a vehicle.
>
>>And if they had to buy a "mystery box" of produce, most simply
>> would not. No grocery store could stay in business operating that way. 
>
> Everything about the product in a grocery store, other than its price, is
>a
>mystery. Who grew it? Where was it grown? How did it get here? How was it
>grown? When was it grown? What will it taste like? What variety is it? How
>much of the price goes to the farmer? Did illegal immigrants pick it? Did
>the ingredients of this salad mix
>even hamburger come from the same place? Who combined them and on what
>basis? Etc,etc. 
>So
>> my own bias about CSAs comes down to not wanting to ask customers to pay
>in
>> advance for things they may never want, or to share the risks of
weather,
>> crop problems, or my own mistakes. 
>So if you were setting up a CSA then you would not  agree to do things
that
>way. Fine. In the real world I think what you would find is that when you
>sit down with the people you are growing the food for [highly recommended]
>it is they that insist on sharing that 'risk', not the producers, which is
>a
>novel and nourishing experience. Anyway as the movement has matured and
>there are multiple CSA's in an area that are co operating  the risk drops
>to
>very little.
>The only option when the CSA movement started out was the 'mystery box'
>system and lots of CSA's still use that system and I agree with you about
>some of their limitations. There are alternatives though. Since the
>Foodbank
>Farm in MA. came up with 'mix and match volume limit' system  in the mid
>'90's many CSA's, including ours, do not force 'sharers' to go home with
>stuff they don't want and wont use. I can think of other ways of getting
>around that to.
>
>> We've never had an unhappy customer yet,
>How would you know? They would just go elsewhere.  We have to deal with
>ours
>and we have a 100% money back guarantee no matter how far into the season
>we
>are but I have only reimbursed one member since 1993 and that was because
>he
>was a pain in arse so I threw him out. 
> In my view, a farmers
>> market is every bit as much "community supported agriculture" as a CSA.
>> That's how Barb and I both feel about it. YMMV.
>More power to you, but there is more than one way to the top of the
>mountain.
>Dave Inglis
>Mahaiwe Harvest CS.A.
>Z5
>PS in '93 I took over what was one of the two original CSA's in the
country
>that been operating  since '87. '07 was my 15th season here.
>
>Hey Liz!
>
>