Community Supported Agriculture, or as Farmer Scott prefers, Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) may have originated over thirty years ago in Japan, with the concept of teikei.  It describes the direct, local, organic food distribution system that arose in response to rapid industrialization and environmental contamination in that country at the time. Many consumers, especially mothers bringing up small children in urban areas, were increasingly anxious about the safety of their food, and organized themselves into buying groups to obtain clean sources of eggs, milk, rice, vegetables and traditionally processed foods.

The establishment of the Japanese Organic Agriculture Association in 1971 united consumers and farmers through the system now known as teikei (literally, “relationship” or “partnership”) and encouraged them to collaborate.  As a result, during the 1970s and 1980s new teikei groups emerged, and by 1990 they had multiplied to over 1000 groups.

The concept spread to the United States, where it became known as the CSA:  a connection between a nearby farmer and the people who eat the food that the farmer produces.  It is a movement that acknowledges a long-ignored reality:  most of what we pay for our food goes to companies that transport, process, and market what comes off the farm, not to farmers themselves. The people who grow food don’t get paid enough to keep on doing it.

In the CSA model, farmers are supported by voluntary communities of eaters organized to pay growers directly for what they produce.  Bypassing the supermarket, the middlemen, and the international transportation system, CSA members receive fresh local produce in season, at reasonable prices.  The essence of the relationship is the mutual commitment:  the farm feeds the people, and the people support the farm and share the inherent risks and potential bounty.  In the classic CSA model (most often found on the East Coast) members pay for the entire season in advance, and share in the production of the farm throughout the growing year. Here in California, most CSA’s operate more like subscription services, where members pay monthly or quarterly and have varying degrees of financial commitment. In most CSA’s, members receive a box of vegetables weekly, either picking up at the farm, delivered to their door, or dropped off at arranged locations in the local community.  The farm box may include fruit, dairy products, baked goods, meats, other products from the members or the farm itself, or items purchased from other farms.

But no matter how flexible the arrangement, the guiding principle remains the same: to re-weave the connection with the land that feeds us.  For many people in the United States today, this connection has been broken.  Most people do not know where or how their food is grown.  They cannot touch the soil and talk to the farmer who tends it.  Food comes from stores and restaurants and vending machines.  It has been washed, processed, packaged, maybe even irradiated, and transported long distances.  CSA offers one of the most hopeful alternatives to this downward spiral, and it is the only model of farming in which customers consciously agree to share the risks and benefits with the farmers.  Ultimately, it is capable of engaging and empowering people to a capacity that has been all but lost in this “modern” world.
For more information:

www.localharvest.org
www.csacenter.org

Sharing the Harvest:  A Citizen’s Guide to Community Supported Agriculture, by Elizabeth Henderson with Robyn Van En, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007.  (excerpted above) 

You can signup for our CSA online!