The what-how-why of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA): Difference between revisions

Though most cooperatives adapt their organisational structures to meet their own specific needs, the coop system is fundamentally based on 7 founding notions: the Rochdale Principles. Originally wrote in England in 1844 by the 28 founders of an early worker co-operative food store<ref>This store gave the members of the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers access to goods they would otherwise not have access to, now being left unemployed as a result of the mechanisation of work</ref>, this set of principles paved the way to our contemporary cooperative movement. (click on each reference tag for more detailed principles)

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A food cooperative is directly owned by both its employees and its members. People who shop at the cooperative typically pay a yearly nominal fee and share the work (accounting, selling, merchandising, cleaning) fairly throughout the year. In general, membership is open to any community member, with stores adopting official policies of nondiscrimination. Often distributing food items from a range of local farms and organic products dealers, these structures are more often found in cities and urban environments, where access to farms is limited.

Community Supported Agriculture (otherwise known as crop sharing) is a partnership between a farm and consumers where the risks and rewards of farming are shared. Often, CSAs allow the consumer to subscribe to the harvest of a certain farm or group of farms. CSA is a solidarity contract, based on a financial commitment from consumers, who pay all of their consumption in advance over a defined period. This system therefore operates on the principle of consumer confidence and responsibility.

== Common types of organisational CSA structures ==

Consumers participate in or may even run the scheme working closely with the farmer who produces what they want.  

A farmer sets up, organises and maintains a CSA. The farmer might also recruit subscribers. The members financially subscribe, with little other involvement.

Local residents set up a CSA and hire a farmer to grow crops. Shareholders/subscribers control most of the management.

Farmer-driven CSA where two or more farms cooperate to supply its members with a greater variety of produce. This model allows individual farms to specialise in the most appropriate farming for that holding (larger farms may concentrate on field scale production, smaller farms on specialist crops and upland farms on rearing livestock).

“<i>I belong to a CSA from Our Table Cooperative that offers a unique, viable solution to this issue. The basic share is a typical CSA box — weekly deliveries of just-harvested organic fruits and veggies from the Cooperative’s farm in Sherwood. The difference is that every week I can also add my choice of meats, cheeses, eggs, milk, pickles, grains, and other products from their co-op member farms and artisans, who are all from Oregon and meet the high standards of the Co-op. They have many pick up sites around Portland; mine is just 10 minutes from home.</i>”

== Benefits of CSA<ref name=handbook /> ==

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<li>Consumers benefit from receiving fresh food from a known source</li>

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<li> A more secure income which improves business planning and time to concentrate on farming</li>

== Where does Community Supported Agriculture comes from? ==

One of the oldest examples of the concept of CSA emerged in the 1960s in Japan. At the time, mothers of Japanese families worried about seeing agriculture industrialise with a massive use of chemicals (in 1957, the first victims of Minamata, poisoned with mercury, were declared). These mothers then founded in 1965 the first <i>teikei</i> (meaning in Japanese “cooperation”, “collaboration” or “partnership”) which primarily concerned dairy cooperatives. The principle of operation is as follows: in exchange for the purchase by subscription of the farmer's harvest, the latter agrees to provide food grown without chemicals.

Alabama born and raised Dr. Booker T. Whatley is best known for his “regenerative farming system” as opposed to the term CSA. In combination with the direct marketing concept of <i>pick-your-own</i> (PYO), a customer harvesting operation managed by farmers and growers. Dr. Whatley also popularised the concept of subscription buyer's club for small farmers starting in the mid-50's. By doing so he also aimed to "generate an agrarian black middle class" in the post WWII USA.  

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The first known CSA in Europe, <i>Les Jardins de Cocagne</i>, was founded in 1978 near Geneva, Switzerland. In the late 70s and through the 80s, only a few other CSA initiatives were started. Around the turn of the Millennium however the CSA movement gathered steam and started to spread. From then on we can observe a tremendous boom of the practice, largely in France thanks the elaboration of the AMAP (the french CSA) charter.

== CSA, a farming system associated with 2 core social movements ==

*Food sovereignty is a term coined by members of the Via Campesina (LVC) in 1996<ref>La Via Campesina comprises 182 local and national organisations in 81 countries from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Altogether it represents about 200 million farmers. Built on a strong sense of unity, solidarity between these groups, it defends peasant agriculture for food sovereignty as a way to promote social justice and dignity and strongly opposes corporate driven agriculture that destroys social relations and nature.</ref>, and asserts the right of people to define their own food systems. Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations.

*The idea and practice of "solidarity economics" emerged in Latin America in the mid-1980s and blossomed in the mid to late 90s. Growing dissatisfaction with the culture of the dominant market economy led groups of more economically privileged people to seek new ways of generating livelihoods and providing services. From largely a middle-class" counter-culture" - similar to that in the Unites States since the 1960's- emerged projects such as consumer cooperatives, cooperative child care and people’s healthcare initiatives that are complementary to existing national health systems currently becoming eroded by the crisis, housing cooperatives, intentional communities, and eco-villages. There were often significant class and cultural differences between these two groups. Nevertheless, the initiatives they generated all shared a common set of operative values: cooperation, autonomy from centralised authorities, and participatory self-management by their members.

To this day, Ecuador 🇪🇨 and Bolivia 🇧🇴 have both included Solidarity Economy and Food sovereignty in their constitutions.

== The question of land ownership for CSA ==

In many countries, the key issue for young would-be CSA farmers is the difficulties that they face in terms of access to land.  

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To illustrate this notion, the french CSA network AMAP (<i>“Une association pour le maintien d'une agriculture paysanne”</i>, which can translate to “Association for the preservation of peasant agriculture”) appears to be a telling example. Indeed, the AMAP network is structured around a precises charter to which all AMAPs must agree to in order to be called AMAP, which utlimately leaves very little place for fraud or disruption.

“A supportive contractualised relationship with no intermediary

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<li>[https://www.ourtable.us/uploads/1/7/0/6/17066100/articles_of_incorporation_-_2014-03-09.pdf/ Main contract]</li>

<li>[https://www.ourtable.us/uploads/1/7/0/6/17066100/bylaws_-_2014-03-25.pdf/ By-laws]</li>

== Current state of European Community Supported Agriculture in numbers<ref>Data from largest European census on CSA to date (2015). Led by Urgenci (an organisation aiming to become the representative of CSAs worldwide), in partnership with the EU and FAO, this census was answered by 70,865 people fed in 403 CSAs http://urgenci.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Overview-of-Community-Supported-Agriculture-in-Europe-F.pdf/ Note: CSA initiatives being mostly independent, it is still rather tricky for Urgenci (which aimes to represent and lobby for CSAs worldwide), to get enough CSAs to answer to their censuses.</ref> ==

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As most CSA structures often want to stay independent from any institution or organisations, it is often rather tricky to find a nearby CSA, even if it is based only a few kilometers away from our home. To that end, we've listed below websites which try to map out as many CSAs per country as possible. Some of them might of course not appear on the lists but it is worth checking these websites to find one near you.

<li>[https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=1LySgImg8tVgKoDBz5NtlnVXgsL0&ll=-17.058983733415534%2C-47.461619899999945&z=4/ Brazil]</li>

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== Notes ==