Community Supported Agriculture
By: Sydney Dangremond
Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA, is a way that people can gain direct contact to local farmers and therefore get the best produce available. People can buy 'shares' of a farmer's produce and they will receive new produce from that farmer roughly every week. It's a very symbiotic relationship. Farmers get to know the people who eat their produce and they get to market and get paid before the harvesting season begins. Consumers get the freshest produce, learn about food production and better ways to cook, and get exposed to various other produce they had never heard of before.
Community Supported Agriculture.
Tens of thousands of families have become a part of CSA and the number continues to grow. Some areas of the country have more demand than farms available. Because the government doesn't keep track of CSAs, it is unclear as to exactly how many farms there are, but the closest guess by LocalHarvest is around 4,000.