Multiple-farm CSAs bring welcome efficiency to farmer-consumer connection.
By Greg Bowman
(Posted May 4, 2010)
 If one Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm is a good way to connect organic farmers with eaters for the season, linking several CSAs together would be great, right? Maybe, but perhaps it’s mostly the discipline of honest accounting for time, labor and sustainable pricing which gives multifarm CSAs a potential advantage.
Single-farm CSA failures are not uncommon, primarily due to the difficulty in balancing the human costs of high-touch organic agriculture with enough dollars to make it pay. Done well, multifarm CSAs allow farmers to produce great food profitably--and have a satisfying quality of life.
Organic agricultural leader Elizabeth Henderson wrote in her 1999 CSA classic “Sharing the Harvest:"
There are advantages to sharing the work and sharing the risk ... once a solid group of farms has formed, the possibilities... are limitless. Networks of small and medium-sized farms, whether farmer-, consumer-, or organizer instigated, can become the backbone of a sustainable local economy.
Eleven years later, this quote appears in “Local Harvest: A Multifarm CSA Handbook,” released last week by the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program of the USDA.
Three general types of multifarm CSA arrangements have emerged:
1) Supplemental farms: A single-farm CSA farm with supplemental share options or available products from other local farms
2) Multifarm CSA: Growers are networked to supply a CSA-like ordering, distribution and seasonal food support system.
3) Cooperative CSA: Growers for a legal cooperative to work out growing, quality control and marketing structures, usually with staff to handle non-farming duties.
Is your CSA viable?
Too frequently, the popularity of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) fails to grapple with the economic, emotional and relational sustainability of the farmers involved.
Many college-educated young adults are highly motivated to grow good food in good ways for people they come to love, without soberly determining whether their income covers their real costs, according to former CSA farmer Peggy Fogarty-Harnish. She now serves as an extension educator in agricultural economic development in Lancaster County, PA.
When any farm operation fails to meet the “does it really pay?” test, a multifarm CSA may offer a better way forward. Joining forces requires a rigorous assessment of work loads, marketing and overall expectations of a target market.
“There are six hard questions, beyond feeling good about growing real food to save the world, to ask if you want to get real about your operation,” said Fogarty-Harnish.
1. Do you and your staff have disability or health insurance?
2. Are you compensating your staff fairly and legally?
3. Are you paying yourself a fair salary?
4. Is your CSA operation creating severe stress in your primary relationships?
5. Are you harming your financial, physical or emotional health so your shareholders can afford to eat well?
6. Are you saving enough money for emergencies and retirement? ~G.B.
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Supplemental farms: Quiet Creek Farm CSA. Since this farm opened in 2006, Aimee and John Good have offered their shareholders a “farm store” at their on-farm pickup site. Since 2008, pasture-raised chicken and organic fruit shares from two other farms are delivered for the two weekly Quiet Creek distributions, located on the Rodale Institute farm near Kutztown, Pennsylvania.
The eight supplying “farm store” producers pay an overhead fee ranging from 20 to 35 percent, depending on the product. Aimee Good said this covers the cost of Quiet Creek’s inventory management for the dairy products, pork, beef, goat cheese, eggs, honey, chicken parts and Rodale Institute cider in the display coolers.
New from SARE
“Local Harvest: A Multifarm CSA Handbook.” No-cost download; order hard copy here . |
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“We make our money on our 215 vegetable shares, but the store is a valuable benefit for our customers, who like being able to buy from many local farmers at one stop,” she said. “Many wouldn’t know how to find the other farms, or have the time to go to buy as much as they do here. Everybody benefits.”
Location and strong farmer networking makes the system work, Aimee Good said, explaining that the supplying farmers are all within an hour’s drive. “We are so lucky. Southeast Pennsylvania has so many kinds of producers,”
What do Quiet Creek customers value most? Aimee Good estimates that about 60 percent would say the vegetable shares, 20 percent U-pick crops and 20 percent farm store/other CSA pickup.
Multifarm CSA: Grow Alabama. In 2004, former California chiropractor Jerry Spenser expanded his successful six-year-old, 150-member CSA in Birmingham. He wanted to connect more Alabamans to Alabama food and to draw more conventional farmers into sustainable agricultural through a low-acreage vegetable enterprise start-ups.
“Broccoli: No yellowing, no worms, mature, but non-flowering.”
--multfarm packing standard. |
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He now works closely with 50 farmers, and communicates with 75 others to supply a statewide CSA-type arrangement. About 40 of the farmers involved, representing some 2,000 acres, are in transition to certified organic production. [verify-pending] Contracts for fields of crops in transition to organic allow farmers to get subsidized loans.Shareholders with renewable one-month service agreements order through an online storefront updated weekly available crops and products from Alabama, Georgia and Florida. Deliveries are to workplaces, homes and community drop-off locations, sometimes by UPS.
Products include an array of seasonal vegetables, eggs, dairy, cheese, turkeys and fish.
Customers set up their CSA order online in three share sizes, select various distribution locations and schedules, and have several payment options.
Cooperative CSA (150-mile sales radius): Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative(LFFC)
of Leola, Pennsylvania, has roughly doubled its dollar volume each year since it started in 2006, racking up sales of several million in 2009. It restricts sales from its 65 farmers (up 20 from 2009) to a 150-mile radius, targeted to metro Philadelphia but including New York City, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. All but two of the farmers are Old Order Amish.
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“We had to sell our personal life to fulfill what seemed to be the demands of our shareholders, almost as an added flavor to their bok choy—but they were just paying for the bok choy,” Peggy Fogarty-Harnish realizes now of her family’s CSA farming experience earlier this decade.
“When the CSA income was gone by late summer, we had to live off our credit cards,” she said.
Their vegetable CSA required the full-time work and energy of Peggy and David, her husband, preventing them from developing other markets, she said. The turnaround started when she took an off-farm job and her husband joined the newly formed Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative (LFFC) in 2006.
Their farm is profitable now, but she noted: “We’re still paying down debt that reflects the true economic cost of raising the vegetables our shareholders ate years ago.
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The co-op gets 80 percent of its sales through wholesale markets. These big-order delivery runs from Lancaster to the cities let the co-op make residential drop-offs to its 1,500 CSA customers at a low additional transport cost. Continuing co-opfarmers who have been most successful in meeting their previous year’s commitment to supply crop and livestock products receive preference in two day-long “bidding” sessions to decide who raises how much of what products for the coming year.
“This year, LFFC produce is all certified organic plus being all local to Lancaster County, so people don’t even have to ask,” said Amy Crystle, CSA manager for LFFC. (The only exception to the organic produce claim is for soft tree fruits, such as peaches.) Added last year: a market stand at the Lancaster City Central Market to create a retail presence, and Four-Season Harvest, a buying club mostly for dairy, meat and poultry products.
“Our family’s CSA was not sustainable, but now I’m making money raising five crops well for the co-op instead of trying to do 45 or 50 crops,” said LFFC board secretary David Fogarty-Harnish, one of five founding farmers. “I’m treating my soil better and have more time for my kids, morning and afternoon. Farmers take the day off for our CSA picnics with shareholders, making a fun day for us, too, instead of the stressful situation in our own CSA of having weekly visits when I really had work to do.”
Structures vary, as does the level of farmer-consumer relationships, when many farms work out ways to share food with more people. Multifarm CSAs can offer consumers more convenience and choice. When these bodies develop systems to handle production, payments and quality well, farmers get better income by raising several select crops of high quality, with fewer of the stresses of operating a single-farm CSA.
Greg Bowman is communications manager with the Rodale Institute.
Other multifarm CSAs
The Food Basket. A multifarm workplace delivery CSA with 15 growers, associated with the Intervale Center, Burlington, Vermont.
Cooperative principles
The International Co-operative Alliance lists seven principles dealing with membership, democratic governance, economic participation, independence and collaboration with other co-ops. |
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Rolling Prairie Farmers Alliance. Seven small farms work cooperatively to market their crops as a “produce subscription service” with four distribution sites in northeast Kansas, each with paid staff. Oldest Midwest vegetable cooperative, started in 1994.
Common Wealth CSA . joins the output of three farms for a weekly distribution at a local cooperative market in western Massachusetts.
Annie’s Gardens and Greens uses a CSA arrangement to market products from as many as 30 farmers in summer, and about five during winter, in northeastern Iowa and beyond.
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multi-farm CSA in the State College area
I coordinate a CSA comprised of about 10 farmers, supplying produce, raw dairy products, eggs, herbs, bread, chicken, and coffee shares. We also offer additional products throughout the season, including berries, fruits, pastured meats, canned goods, honey, locally made natural body products, and other local items that come our way. Our share boxes are delivered to homes and offices in State College and Bellefonte. We've been in business since 2005. More on our website: www.groundworkfarms.com.
Our CSA has a coordinator who does all of the marketing, accounting, communication with customers and delivery, leaving the farmers free to focus on production. This makes it very popular among the farmers.
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