Sharing the Bounty - CSA Program
I am equally interested in both origin stories for Community Supported Agriculture that I typically see out there. The first involves a fan favorite, Rudolf Steiner, whose work I learned about through my study of Waldorf education and free schools. Steiner (1861 - 1925) had his tentacles in so many fields of study, and built his philosophy on the interplay between the natural/scientific and the spiritual. Look him up for more. It’s quite lovely and challenging stuff. Steiner articulated the foundational concepts of Community Supported Agriculture in the 1920s, though not in name.
Equally amazing and laudable is the story of Booker T. Whatley (1915-2005), a black horticulturalist and agriculture professor at Tuskegee University, Alabama. In the 1960s, in the atmosphere of the Civil Rights Movement, Whatley advocated for and helped to establish “clientele membership clubs,” which essentially asked for an upfront payment from customer to farmer for a season’s of harvest. This gave the farmer the capital to invest in seed, soil amendments, tools, and so on, and members were to reap the benefits (and suffer the losses) of the farm for that season or year.
Modern Community Supported Agriculture programs vary farm-to-farm, although the concept is rooted in Steiner’s philosophy and Whatley’s programs. The basic premise that seems ubiquitous, though, is that consumers invest in the farm and reap shares of whatever is coming off the farm in terms of produce. Often, CSA’s will offer members add-ons, such as farm-fresh eggs, honey, even meat products and flowers, to supplement their vegetable offering.
A modified CSA model seemed a great way to start offering our products to a small, select group in our area. We contacted folks one-by-one, mostly people who knew about Quelite, and offered them a box of produce from the farm for a set price, delivery included. I also included add-ons, particularly salsa and pickles, which could accompany boxes. I reached out directly through text, and kept a spreadsheet to keep in mind who had ordered and when. Boxes were to be reused, and I invited folks to return mason jars for reuse as well. In all, our first season ran for nearly 5 months, and we had a little over 20 folks participate - although to varying degrees.
It’s safe to say after that experience that we here at Quelite have a love-hate relationship with the CSA model. On the positive side, I see it as a pedagogical tool. Having been a member of a CSA in Austin for many years, I know the feeling of receiving in a box a crop that is either unfamiliar or even simply not popular in our household. Having invested in the box, though, I felt compelled to figure it out and find a way to incorporate that food into our diet.
Boxes packed and ready for delivery
In addition, I am attracted to the seasonal changes in the CSA, and I am interested in how the changes over the course of a year educate people about what happens on local farms. It might call into question the purchase of a mango or pineapple in the dead of winter, for example. As a farmer, the CSA means that I am doing well by my customers by producing something (usually, between 5-7 somethings in fact) that I know meets the value expected by the customers. The composition of those ‘somethings,’ however, is fully determined by what is happening on the farm, leaving me less beholden to a really specific desire for a precise amount of a crop, which may happen when one works with restaurants, for example.
Finally, as a farmer who strives to mimic the diversity of nature, I am thrilled to be able to grow many crops in a relatively small area, rather than acres and acres of a mono crop. This is good for me, it is good for the soil, and it helps in pest management.
On the downside, the CSA has proven to present some challenges - none of which is too big to overcome. For one thing, it takes a good bit of management. Because we don’t require an upfront payment, but rather a pay-per-box-when-available model, I am tasked with estimating the number of boxes I can put together based on what’s in the field, then reaching out to our 20 or so customers (mostly friends and family at this point) to see whether they’re interested in a box for that week. It means that I’m having to reach out to each person individually, and at times without much notice, I’m headed their way with a box.
Furthermore, because our customers primarily live in Austin, I have to plan deliveries of the boxes. Keeping in mind that I’m in Austin to drop off and pick up my daughter at school 5 days a week, it’s not all that big of a hassle. I attempted to divide the customers into 2 sides of town - North/Central & South - to make it easier, although with summer travel and interruptions, that didn’t prove to be very firmly set. This issue, and the aforementioned needing to contact directly, haven’t been all that troublesome, although I see both being potential challenges if the number of customers jumped from 20 to, say 50. We’ll need to build out systems to accommodate that increase, if that’s the direction we go.
Another challenge to the CSA model is feeling like the things coming off the farm are adequate to constitute ‘a share,’ or a box of veggies. Towards the latter part of the summer, for example, we really only had cucumbers, basil, squash, and okra to offer. While I’m sure our friends and family would have been fine with a 4-crop box, I personally felt like it wasn’t meeting my expectations. That left me with literally hundreds of pounds of these 4 vegetables. Needless to say, I think my family is done with squash for a while. I did, however, take advantage of the surplus by pickling and canning a good deal of the excess, and the chickens were happy to process the rest!
A final challenge to the CSA program was keeping track of our wax-covered produce boxes. While I mentioned to most folks the need to get those back each week, things got more complicated as the biweekly schedule was interrupted with vacations or simply a lack of need for vegetables. I have had to make special trips just to travel around and pick up the boxes, which again, isn’t a big issue for a dozen friends. Make that number 50, and that changes everything.
All-in-all, our first season of the CSA program has been a success. I look forward to continuing the model with the folks we worked with this year, although I am also strategizing my communication and order methods so that I don’t feel as if I’m bugging people and they don’t feel pressured to get anything they don’t really want. In addition to the CSA, I think restaurant sales and perhaps a farmers’ market are interesting revenue streams for upcoming seasons.
More on Booker T. Whatley and the forgotten history of CSAs
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/you-can-thank-black-horticulturist-booker-t-whatley-your-csa-180977771/
