Health, Taken Seriously

I’ve known about Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) for a couple years now.  The first time I heard about it, I thought it sounded great.  Basically, you buy a share in a local farm and support it through an entire growing season.  Then you get some of the produce from that farm.  If it’s a great season, everyone wins.  If it’s a bad season, you may get less produce but at least you supported organic farmers and the local economy.  Unfortunately, we always had a reason not to join–one year, my husband thought it was unnecessary as we were growing our own garden, the next year we were selling our house and moving.  But this year, we had no excuses!

I’m excited because just today I found a CSA that still had shares available (the one my friend does was booked solid two months ago, and unfortunately I don’t start thinking about summer produce until the weather warms up).  I signed up for a single veggie share, which will be 26 weeks of vegetables from June to Dec, averaging about 8-10 lbs per week.  I also signed up for a fruit share (this is a bit more complicated in my state and involves the cooperation of many more farms), which will be 22 weeks of about 7 lbs of fruit each week.  I have to go pick up the produce myself, but it looks like there may be a delivery location in my neighborhood, or at least within a few blocks of where my husband works.  It was a bit painful forking out hundreds of dollars now for food I won’t see for months, but I did the math and it looks like the produce will work out to be less than $35/week for almost 15-18 lbs of organic produce.  Plus I get to feel good about supporting local farmers, organic farming, and my local economy.  I’m happy.

If you’re interested in joining one, check out localharvest.org.  You can click on CSA, enter your zipcode, and it will give you a list of CSA’s in your area.

Here is some additional information from the website of the CSA I joined:

What is a CSA?

A CSA is a straightforward system that brings together community members, farmers and agricultural land into a relationship of support.  Based on an annual commitment to one another, community members provide a pre-season payment to purchase a “share” of the season’s harvest.  The member then receives a weekly box of a wide variety of fresh organic vegetables and fruit through the growing season, harvested at the peak of ripeness and flavor delivered to a convenient location in your neighborhood.

What is a share, and what is it worth?

With a pre-season payment you may purchase a “share” of the farm’s summer and fall harvest.  You then receive a weekly box of fresh, organic produce through our 26 week harvest cycle, mid-June into mid-December.  In signing up, you dedicate yourself to being our customer for the season.  This provides the farm with a secure market for all our growing efforts.  The farm, in turn, commits to providing an abundant, diverse and quality array of vegetables and fruit.

In a strictly dollars and cents view, the worth of a share does represent a fair price for the produce offered if such food could be comparably found in supermarkets. More philosophically, the worth of a share is certainly linked with the value you place upon eating fresh and locally grown food, knowing who it is that grows your food, the use of sustainable methods of food production, contributing to keeping our local economy robust and your own eating habits and life style.

Filed under: Environment, Food and Nutrition on April 9th, 2009