Community Supported Agriculture

Community Supported Agriculture

What are (the benefits of) CSAs?

v Community Supported Agriculture is a model system of agriculture, that focuses upon the importance of local harvest, distribution and commitment.

v CSAs farms sell shares to community members who ultimately provide the necessary financial support in order to harvest productions.

v CSAs create equal risk among shareholders, because the entire harvest is divided between the number of shareholders each member is given an equal amount and thus risk is evenly distributed.

v CSAs principle focus upon local production and distribution enables for a strong, healthy, local economic security that ensures local regional strength.

v The products grown by local CSA farms is guaranteed pesticide-free and infused with natural nutrients, offering a safe, healthy alternative to chemicals of the global production of food.

v CSAs also help to reinforce a personal understanding of food and its origins, a fact that is highly disregarded under the current food culture of the United States.

While performing research I realized how difficult it must be to spread the word of the benefits and sustainable advantage of systems such as CSAs. Prior to reading Barbara Kingsolver’s  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle I have been exposed to the terrors of the global food system, but I had been left in dismay, feeling quite helpless. In contrast Kingsolver’s memoir touches upon the calamities of the global food system, while compassionately offering insight and suggestions, answers and potential solutions for the catastrophic, yet drastically increasing problems that threaten our food distribution, and entire environmental conditions at large.

The local commitment benefits consumers as well as farmers, creating, securing and maintaining a personal, sustainable system that harvests and distributes products to local shareholders. 

Alexandria Valente