WESTON A. PRICE FOUNDATION
INFORMATION ALERT
May 13, 2005

SUPPORT FROM CITY FOLKS TAKE ROOT ON THE FARM

by Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY

A new way of farming is quietly sowing seeds of change. It has
brought new life to family farms in Illinois, let city dwellers
cultivate deep relationships with the people who grow their food in
Rochester, N.Y., and allowed new farms to sprout up in Tulsa. The
ultimate harvest may be the preservation of the family farm.

Community-supported agriculture - CSA - has grown from a few
pioneers in the late 1980s to as many as 1,700 farms that feed about
340,000 families a week, according to Local Harvest, a Santa Cruz,
Calif.-based Web site that tracks CSAs and farmers markets.

Here's how it works: For $13 to $25 a week, a family buys a share of
a nearby farm's yearly harvest. Each week the family gets a box of
vegetables - and, at some CSAs, fruit - either delivered to the
house or a designated drop-off point. Though CSA farmers take their
shareholders' likes and dislikes into consideration when they're
buying seed, once it's in the ground, there's no changing the menu.
What's ripe is ripe, and that's what's in the box.

The number of CSA operations is only a tiny fraction of the 2.1
million U.S. farms counted in the 2002 Census of Agriculture. But
they represent a new way of keeping small farmers on the land in an
era of agricultural consolidation. Every year, CSA farmers figure
out how many shares their harvest can support - anywhere from 25 to
1,000. Once those are all spoken for, the CSA is sold out until the
following year.

LOCATING A CSA FARM

Local Harvest
http://en.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?
module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j=30353306&u=276044

Robyn Van En Center for CSA Resources
National CSA Farm Directory
http://en.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?
module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j=30353306&u=276045

Jim and Diann Moore were on the verge of losing their nearly 100-
year-old farm in Watseka, Ill., when the Prairieland CSA in
Champaign-Urbana came looking for a new farmer in 2003. "My husband
was working road construction, I was working in a grocery store
(and) we'd spent our boys' savings accounts," Diann Moore says.

Then in December, the CSA checks started to come from the group's 60
members. "It's been a lifeline," she says with a catch in her
voice. "Spring is when we need the money. It's when we buy the
seeds. It's there when the propane bill comes for the greenhouses."

Farmers often have had to take out loans at the beginning of the
growing season and pay the money back with interest when the crops
come in. But CSAs turn that age-old pattern on its head.

"I get my money upfront," says Leigh Hauter, who has run a CSA out
of his family's Bull Run Mountain Organic Farm in The Plains, Va.,
for 12 years. "With the CSA, people join up in the spring, and that
pays our expenses."

CSA shareholders pay in advance. Some pay monthly; others pay for
the season with one check. Either way, the money's in the farmer's
bank account when it's needed.

Today the Moores' farm has 143 members who each pay $405 for 33
weeks of vegetables. Though Moore says the family income "is still
probably below the poverty line," they're earning enough that
they've been able to quit their off-farm jobs. Best of all, their
oldest son, Wes, 17, will get his wish and be able to farm with his
family when he finishes school instead of leaving for a job in town.

The Moores feel blessed to have their shareholders, who have become
like family. "We get Christmas cards. We've gone to people's
funerals. If it weren't for this group of people, we wouldn't still
be farming," Moore says.

'Rude awakening' for some

Not that CSAs are right for every farmer, says Greg Bowman, editor
of NewFarm.org, a Web magazine.

"It's been rather a rude awakening for some farmers, going from
selling by the ton at a local feed mill to growing things by the
pound for people who believe they have a stake in deciding what
you're going to grow," he says.

But when it works, it's great for both sides, says Kathryn Jensen of
Rochester, N.Y. She has been a shareholder in Peacework Farm for 10
years and says she's in tune with the seasons and the struggles
of "her" farmers. "Supermarkets have almost completely isolated the
consumer from the natural food production cycle," she says.

And that's why CSAs are "a revolution in agriculture," says David
Ward, director of the Rodale Institute, a non-profit educational and
research organization in Kutztown, Pa., that works to promote
sustainable farming.

"Just the act of going and picking up a box puts the consumer much
more into the mind-set of 'Where is this food coming from?' and 'Why
is it available now?' "

It has been a huge shift in the Jensen household. Her sons now know
that asparagus is available in the spring and strawberries in the
summer, and neither will be on the table in December. They're also
much more adventuresome eaters, she says. "My older son, who's 10,
loves kale, collard greens and Brussels sprouts," she says. "I tell
people that and they're floored."

Donna Camp joined the Moores' CSA a year ago. It has taken her
Urbana, Ill., family a while to get used to eating things she didn't
know existed before, such as the green, knobby ball called kohlrabi,
a mild member of the broccoli family.

"We didn't know that cabbage could taste that good," Camp
says. "It's really made us question what we have been eating before."

An idea is born

The CSA movement got its start in the USA in 1986 from farmers who
had spent time on Swiss and German organic farms. In those
countries, the idea of producer-consumer alliances was inspired by
the co-op movement in Chile in the 1970s. The first CSA farms in
America were the Great Barrington CSA Garden in Massachusetts and
Temple-Wilton Community Farm in New Hampshire.

Today, not all CSAs are alike. There are farms on which the
shareholders work a certain number of hours each season. And there
are others in which shareholders just leave the farmer a house key
so a driver can drop off the food.

The harvest itself is growing more varied. CSAs began as vegetable
farms, with some fruit thrown in. Today there are all kinds of
shares that include flowers, herbs, milk, butter, yogurt, cheese,
poultry, eggs and meat - often lamb, pork and sometimes beef.

Anecdotes and recipes

One thing as crucial as sun and rain to a thriving CSA is a
newsletter. It gives members weekly updates on what's in the
greenhouse, the ground and the reaper.

Hauter has been writing a newsletter for the 400 members of his
Virginia farm for nine years. Each week they get a dispatch on his
ongoing battle with a bear over who controls the beehives, an update
on an errant billy goat and some musings on farming. It has become
so popular that his members are pushing him to turn it into a book.

Newsletters also provide another piece of the CSA puzzle: recipes.
CSA customers, especially new ones, can find themselves with
unfamiliar vegetables in quantities they'd never buy at the market.
So almost all newsletters include recipes for that week's
vegetables. (Hints: Rutabagas make great oven fries, and even kids
like kale when it's cooked with raisins and pine nuts.)

CSA also are a way into farming for young people just starting out,
because the certain income gives them a safety net. It's how Emily
Oakley and Mike Appel, both 27, have made it on a 2-acre spread on
leased land in Tulsa.

The couple met more than eight years ago in their first college
course on agriculture, Oakley says. After apprenticing for three
years on CSA farms, they moved to Oakley's hometown with $20,000 and
a dream: to start one of their own.

It has been a struggle. The first year they lost peppers to
torrential rain, lettuce to heat and broccoli to hungry cabbage
looper larvae. But even so, they were astonished at how much they
could reap.

"One week in July we harvested 1,000 pounds of tomatoes," Appel
says. They had 10 members their first year, drawn by postcards sent
to everyone they knew in town. "Our dentist had fliers up in his
office," Oakley says.

This year they're up to 35 members who pay $15 a week each during
the 20-week harvest season, which brings in about $10,500 a year. In
addition, they sell about $25,000 a year at the farmers market and
another $6,000 to restaurants and wholesalers, bringing their total
yearly gross income to a whopping $20,750 each for the privilege of
doing back-breaking labor 52 weeks a year.

But they wouldn't have it any other way. "I'm sure people look at
those numbers and think 'Holy crap! That's not enough money for two
people,' " Oakley says. "But it's sort of a choice you have to make."

Oakley and Appel are examples of CSA farmers who diversify, selling
at farmers markets, to restaurants and to wholesalers to add income
without having to work off the farm. After all, "we want to be
farmers," Oakley says.

"But that CSA cash flow in the winter is critical," says farmer
Judith Redmond of Full Belly Farm outside of Guinda, Calif., north
of Sacramento. Full Belly makes about 25% of its income from its
CSA, about 25% from farmers markets and 50% from restaurants and
wholesale sales.

Truly a family operation

A growing CSA customer base is made up of parents who want to give
their children a sense that food doesn't just sprout out of the
supermarket vegetable case.

At Full Belly Farm, Redmond is one of four partners who grow food
for the farm's 1,000 shareholders. "We especially get a lot of
people with kids who really think it's important for them to get
connected to where their food comes from," she says.

Like most CSAs, Full Belly fosters its community by holding yearly
potlucks in the spring, with tours, tractor rides and chances to see
cows, goats, sheep and chickens.

But to the Rev. Mike Mulberry and his flock at the Community United
Church of Christ in Champaign, Ill., there is a larger constituency.
To them, the CSA is a kind of Christian ministry unto itself.

The parish buys three shares of the Moores' CSA and donates the food
each week to a local food pantry for the hungry.

As Mulberry sees it, the Moores support the community, the parish
supports the Moores, both support the social service agencies and
everybody "is transformed."

IS A CSA RIGHT FOR YOU?

Pro:

Access to fresh vegetables, often organic.
Access to produce that's in season.
A connection to the farm and farmer.
An introduction to unfamiliar vegetables.

Con:

Shareholders usually must travel to a pick-up point.
Little choice in the foods.
Vegetable variety changes weekly.
An introduction to unfamiliar vegetables.

Find this article at:
http://en.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?
module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j=30353306&u=276046

**********************************************************

Bill Sanda
Executive Director
Weston A. Price Foundation
bsanda@...

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