A community supported agriculture farm or a“csa” is a concept of a farmer (who uses organic farming methods) that pre-sells shares or subscriptions of their crops ahead of time to the community. The community members who pre-purchase a subscription of the diverse crops receive either a weekly or biweekly amount of produce. The produce that is distributed on pick up days for the shareholders is from what the farmer has grown and harvested at the csa farm. In addition to the shareholders receiving the freshest, most nutritionally sound produce harvest that morning of pick up, the shareholders can put a face on the farmer, knowing that their food comes from a safe place. Distance of food miles for such food is at a minimum, and the local agricultural community thrives by this example of "local food system" support.
By pre-purchasing a share you are investing in the farmer to commence the subscription year’s crop planning. This includes purchasing of seeds, plants, soil amendments, necessary tools/supplies, fertilizers, and other items to grow your food for you. When the farmer has a number of subscriptions reserved by the subscribers, they are able to plan accordingly. Shares are limited to the number of acres the farmer can plan to use for any given year, the size of the shares, deadlines and other factors. Most csa’s will overgrow their crops to ensure a strong supply of produce due to mother nature’s ways or unforeseen low yields of a particular crop, as a result some csa’s will open up more shares later in the year, but this does not guarantee that if you wait until after the production starts that you would have an opportunity to join. Waiting for a share later in the season almost always ends up costing more as well.
Many csa farmers diversify their production and may also depend on other venues to supplement their farming income. Farmers markets, grocery stores, restaurants, are examples of other outlets a farmer may choose to grow for in addition to shareholders. Some have outside jobs away from the farm as well. Lastly, there are other csa’s who involve the shareholders from the very beginning . It includes working shares, sharing the farmers cost of living, and other details. We do not operate in this latter model of a csa. We prefer the flexibility of networking with other venues, to diversify our farm products that we grow in addition to the CSA shareholders.
Why CSA's do what we do.......We have hundreds of reasons why, and here are a few of them! I, like many other csa farmers use low inputs to achieve the greatest outputs. For example we use organic/natural methods to manage the soil in which the food is grown. The belief of feeding the soil instead of the plant has tremendous value to the nutritional elements of the produce grown. As quoted from the book Real Food Fake Food "Soil bacteria, which are essential to the creation of topsoil (the only natural material plants can grow in), and which make soil nutrients available to plants, cannot feed on unnatural chemical fertilizers: they must have organic material. Without organic material, their soil factories shut down, and instead of being a living source of nutrients and usually none of the trace elements, which more and more we are discovering to be essential to human growth.".
As far as the health of the soil and how it impacts our mmediate environment, we have an obligation to be consious of what we are doing in and around our production of food. Only in the last 100 or so years has food been grown for profit margin purposes which for that reason only has encourage the large agribusiness producers to increase unnatural chemical inputs in order to get the most number of any produce item, the special size or transportable form of those items to increase the bottom line. This way of growing food has become such an obsession with our culture that many folks do not realize the impact this type of food production has on our land and what it is doing to our bodies. We are natural beings that did not derive from blue water of WWII era. As a small scale multi crop producer I am the last one to dictate to other farmers that do not share my views that what they do are bad. It is only to state that if we all just try some natural methods it can make a difference on some level.
Before the industrialization of our food production, people ate seasonally. Growing and eating crops that were adapted to their climates was their mainstay. Food preservation technics were a common practice handed down by generations. There are many populations around the world that are genetically attuned to gain the needed nutrition from their region's food varieties. For an example-did you know that many of the trace elements and nutrition values that our society here in the US can obtain from what is grown in the areas they live? Did you know that there is just as much Vitamin C in a spinach variety as it would be from any citrus only grown elsewhere?
