This article is from the Macon County Chronicle. See earlier post for
contact info for Jeff Poppen and info on how to buy his newest book.
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)
Jeff Poppen
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is the way we market about half
of our farm's produce. I still sell vegetables to health food stores
and have a cow/calf operation of about 30 head. But as our CSA
approaches the end of its second year, the farm feels financially
more secure
A group of families living around the Nashville area care about the
farm. I'm less concerned now with how to market produce, price
fluctuations, and occasional crop failures, and can make important
farming decisions based on what is best for the farm. This doesn't
keep me from making wrong decisions; I should have dug those sweet
potatoes by now.
When people join our CSA, they agree to help cover the farm's
expenses with $25 a week or $100 a month between Memorial Day and
Thanksgiving. In return for their support, they receive a half bushel
of vegetables every Monday afternoon, which they pick up in Nashville.
But they get something else, too. These people, our members, have a
chance to care for a piece of land - our farm. I encourage, and would
like to insist, they come out to the farm and get to know its beauty
and characteristics.
Most folks don't want to be farmers. It's a dangerous and stressful
occupation, although filled with numerous fringe benefits. When folks
join a CSA, they enjoy many of the pleasures of a farm without having
to won one. They can bring the family out for a picnic, see animals
and gardens, and their Monday dinner will likely have been harvested
that morning.
But more importantly, they are reestablishing a connection to the
land, reuniting a lost tie between the city and the country,
developing a mutual trust and friendship with a farmer, and actually
saving a farm.
Every day farms are lost. The majority of food nowadays is not
produced on small, self-sufficient farms, but on large corporate
agricultural businesses with environmental and economic consequences
which are often not in the local communities' best interests.
The smaller family farms, which are disappearing at an alarming rate,
are much more productive, healthy, and cared for. CSA members are
using their vegetable dollars to support a sustainable agriculture
system which is ever bent on improving the fertility and long term
production of the land. They offer hope for rural America.
Farmers who tend their farms organically, producing crops with just
the energy of cover drops, compost, and animals, deserve to be paid
well. CSA members made this admittedly biased opinion of mine
possible. Best of all, the farmer in turn spends his money locally.
I hire local people to help on the farm, I buy just about everything
the farm needs locally and it's an economic fact that prosperous
farmers create the need for many other local businesses.
I can see where the tobacco allotment program, which is now being
dismantled, has saved many of the small farms and communities in the
Middle Tennessee and Kentucky area by insuring a market for a crop.
CSA's now offer another chance to save a small family farm, this time
by a group of families offering to meet the farm's financial needs in
exchange for produce.
Simply put, instead of a tobacco crop, I raise a few acres of
vegetables. Instead of grossing 15 thousand from tobacco, I ask 25
people to pledge $100 a month for half a year, and gross the same
amount.
We start sending peas, lettuce, onions, carrots, and beets on
Memorial Day, and soon add garlic, green beans, summer squash, and
cucumbers. As the spring vegetables decline, we send tomatoes,
potatoes, peppers and sweet corn. By fall, CSA members are getting
winter squash, sweet potatoes, and an assortment of oriental
vegetables. We try to add something new each week, and occasionally
send melons, mushrooms, herbs, and flowers. A large garden, with 40
different crops, always has plenty to harvest.
Mary drives the produce into Nashville where Gabrielle, Donna, and
Tina divide it up into boxes for the members to pick up. Then Mary
comes back to the farm with a handful of checks.
I have a stash of Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, butternuts, and
garlic to feed our members through Thanksgiving, if not longer. Our
garden is full of greens which will also last through then. Our
members feel secure knowing they have this organic food coming each
Monday, and the farm knows its monetary needs will be met.
Everyone gains from Community Supported Agriculture. It's a model for
reinvigorating the countryside with productive and profitable small
organic farms. Members learn where their food comes from, and eat
what is in season. They bear crop losses with the farmer, and enjoy
the bumper crops, too. They are part of the farm. Rekindling this
feeling of caring for the land in the 21st century may be more
nourishing than the fresh organic vegetables they get each week
