The answer to that question below, but first a few other items.
Despite the cold as of late – and the earlier lack of rain – the farm is looking wonderful this season. That’s not to say it hasn’t looked wonderful in past seasons, just that it is looking especially wonderful this season. We had to temporarily store the warm season crops back into the greenhouse. With forecasted temps in the 30s it didn’t make any sense to leave them outside. We’ll move them back on Wednesday and look to plant them sometime next week. Other than that everything is going well.
We are still taking orders for all shares. The deadline for add-on shares (Fruit, Cheese, Meat, Seafood, Eggs, Coffee, and Ice Cream) is May 31st. Sign-up as soon as possible so we can plan accordingly. VeggieShare sign-up deadline is once the shares are sold out. To sign-up you can send me an email and follow-up with payment or you can go to our nifty new online store and place your order; either way works for me.
We have a new employee on the farm. His name is William. He is helping with sales and marketing. See his latest creation on our YouTube channel or right here:
Op-Ed
I’ve written in the past about how the farming landscape has changed over the 13 years I’ve been involved. In particular how the CSA farm business has “evolved”. I put that in quotes because I don’t feel it is evolution but devolution (I’m not sure that’s a word but spell checker thinks it is so I’m using it even if it doesn’t mean what I intend it to mean). To understand what I mean let’s look at how the definition of Community Supported Agriculture, or more importantly, what people believe they are purchasing when they join a CSA farm, has changed over time.
In the past, when early adopters were buying into the CSA concept, the idea was to connect the consumer of the food to the farm where it was grown. The goal was to create a farming business model that spread the risk of farming across a broader set of people resulting in a greater chance for the farm to remain in existence and continue to provide the kinds of food the members appreciate. It began in Japan where women became alarmed at the demise of local farms and the corporitization (my word) of the agriculture industry. They wanted to ensure that healthful, nutritious food grown with minimal impact on the environment continued to be available locally.
As the movement increased there was always the assumption that the food was grown organically, that the farmer cared for the land and that the farm provided all the produce in the shares – or in some cases a set of farms produced the contents of the box. It was assumed that the farm took steps to build the soil so that it continued to be a viable place to farm for future generations. It was assumed that the farm was family owned, small in comparison to other farms and that the connection between the farmer and the member was a close one – there was no VP of CSA in the corporation. It was also assumed the farm was local.
I believe these assumptions are still there. Unfortunately they no longer match reality. As CSA became more successful it attracted ever larger farms. What was once a movement for supporting small, local, organic farms has now become nothing more than a cover for any size farm anywhere. When I started our farm in 2003 we were an average size farm selling CSA shares. We grow about 8 acres of vegetables every year – not a huge amount but sufficiently large to have to hire help. Other farms were around 20 acres. Then there were the smaller farms that were typically a part-time job or avocation for the farmer. We all grew our produce using organic practices. We only put into our shares what we grew. We gave all the produce to our members (though even in those days some sold at Farmers’ Markets as they were building up their membership). The idea was pure and the assumptions held true.
Earlier this century I started to see large-scale, organic wholesale farms start selling “CSAs”. They saw the CSA movement as a way to receive retail pricing for their wholesale vegetables. These farms typically sold their veggies to co-ops and maybe farmers’ markets. The price point of retail vegetables was quite attractive to a wholesale business. Typically perishable vegetables are marked up 100% to cover losses in the store. So getting twice as much for the same vegetables was a wonderful thing for a wholesale vegetable farmer.
The influx of large-scale organic farms was bad enough. What I am now seeing is a whole new influx of farms that are two orders of magnitude larger than what was typical of CSA farms 10 years ago. Today it isn’t unheard of for a farm of 500 acres, 1000 acres or larger offering “shares”. And these farms are not organic. In fact some of them brag about how they don’t grow organically and that their approach to using chemicals is less toxic than organic agriculture. I probably shouldn’t say brag since they typically hide it somewhere on their website. None the less, they are far from organic and far from small and many times far from local.
Yet the consumer still believes they are buying something unique, something they can’t find in the local store (even though these same farms sell their produce to the local stores). When it was wholesale farms selling to local co-ops offering a “CSA” it was questionable. Now when Kowalskis, and Byerlys/Lunds, and similar stores are offering “CSAs” it becomes dishonest at best. But the average consumer doesn’t know or understand the difference and we who built this market – and have little in the way of resources – need to educate and defend the differences.
The consumer today sees a “CSA” as a box of produce delivered to a convenient location where the consumer paid upfront for the privilege of receiving the “share”. The sharing of risk, the connection to the farm, the connection to the farmer, the sharing of the rewards, is all lost on the average consumer. The desire to retain small, local, family-owned, organic farms doesn’t exist. They may still have some concern for the environment — the need to be “green” — and their thought is by buying a “CSA share” I am doing my part to save the world. But without any real investigation into what they are buying their attempt to do their part to save small farms and the world is no better than clicking “Like” on a Facebook posting. To today’s consumer, a share box of produce is a share box of produce. It is a commodity. So the cheaper, most convenient “share” is the one they purchase.
And all of us in the CSA business are to blame. We let this happen. We took our eye off the ball and did nothing to get the word out as to what a CSA farm is. We let anyone who wanted to co-op the term “CSA” do so. We let organizations with good intentions describe CSA as a box of produce delivered to a drop location close to your home or business. I don’t know what we could do to stop it. It isn’t a trademarked term. There is no government oversight – nor should there be. But there needs to be more education so that when someone buys a “CSA share” they are actually getting a CSA share, and not just a box of produce grown somewhere by someone using whatever means they find most efficient. We need to educate the consumer on what they should look for when purchasing a CSA share. If they don’t want to know their farmer, experience farming, share the risk and the reward of farming, or know where their food comes from they can purchase a box of produce from Sam’s Club or Cub Foods. Just know that is what you are buying and don’t call it a CSA.
For those who read this far and are interested in sharing your experience with CSA click this link. It is a survey from Minnesota Public Radio.
And here is a picture of Bill.