Community-supported agriculture

Not to be confused with Sharecropping.

Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA)
An example of a week's CSA share, including bell peppers, okra, tomatoes, beans, potatoes, garlic, eggplant, and squash

Community-supported agriculture (CSA model) or cropsharing is a system that connects producers and consumers within the food system closer by allowing the consumer to subscribe to the harvest of a certain farm or group of farms. It is an alternative socioeconomic model of agriculture and food distribution that allows the producer and consumer to share the risks of farming.[1] The model is a subcategory of civic agriculture that has an overarching goal of strengthening a sense of community through local markets.[2]

Community-supported agriculture can be considered as a practice of Commoning.[3] It is an example of community-led management of the production and distribution of goods and services. The organization of food provisioning through commoning is complementary to the horizontal axis of market mediated food provisioning and the verticality of the state distribution and regulation on food.[3] As a model where market agents do not interact solely as competitors but as “members of a community collaborating in pursuing a collective action for the commonwealth”[3] it is also recognized and supported by public policies in some countries. Such frameworks of collaboration between public administration and the cooperative sector are known as Public-Commons-Partnerships (PCP)[4][5][6] and have also been established in relation to food. As a prefigurative practice that decommodifies food and “strengthens the imaginary of community as a source of reward and space of emancipation“[3] CSA has been acknowledged as an important step-stone in a sustainability transition in agri-food systems.[7][8][9]

In return for subscribing to a harvest, subscribers receive either a weekly or bi-weekly box of produce or other farm goods. This includes in-season fruits, vegetables, and can expand to dried goods, eggs, milk, meat, etc. Typically, farmers try to cultivate a relationship with subscribers by sending weekly letters of what is happening on the farm, inviting them for harvest, or holding an open-farm event. Some CSAs provide for contributions of labor in lieu of a portion of subscription costs.[10]

The term CSA is mostly used in the United States, Canada and the UK but a variety of similar production and economic sub-systems are in use worldwide and in Austria and Germany as Solidarische Landwirtschaft (lit. 'solidarity agriculture', abbreviated to Solawi).

  1. ^ Galt, Ryan E. (October 1, 2013). "The Moral Economy Is a Double-edged Sword: Explaining Farmers' Earnings and Self-exploitation in Community-Supported Agriculture". Economic Geography. 89 (4): 341–365. doi:10.1111/ecge.12015. ISSN 1944-8287. S2CID 154308816.
  2. ^ Obach, Brian K.; Tobin, Kathleen (June 1, 2014). "Civic agriculture and community engagement". Agriculture and Human Values. 31 (2): 307–322. doi:10.1007/s10460-013-9477-z. ISSN 0889-048X. S2CID 143250445.
  3. ^ a b c d Jose Luis, Vivero-Pol (2018). "24 FOOD AS COMMONS Towards a new relationship between the public, the civic and the private". Routledge Handbook Of Food As A Commons: Expanding Approaches (1 ed.). Routledge. ISBN 9781315161495.
  4. ^ Leitheiser, Stephen; Trell, Elen-Maarja; Horlings, Ina; Franklin, Alex (May 2022). "Toward the commoning of governance". Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. 40 (3): 744–762. doi:10.1177/23996544211033992. ISSN 2399-6544. S2CID 237692106.
  5. ^ Russell, Bertie; Milburn, Keir; Heron, Kai (May 27, 2022). "Strategies for a new municipalism: Public–common partnerships against the new enclosures". Urban Studies. 60 (11): 2133–2157. doi:10.1177/00420980221094700. ISSN 0042-0980. S2CID 249139448.
  6. ^ Bottiglieri, Maria; Pettenati, Giacomo; Toldo, Alessia (May 1, 2016). "Toward the Turin Food Policy. Good practices and vision". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  7. ^ Bui, Sibylle; Cardona, A.; Lamine, C.; Cerf, M. (December 2016). "Sustainability transitions: Insights on processes of niche-regime interaction and regime reconfiguration in agri-food systems". Journal of Rural Studies. 48: 92–103. doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2016.10.003.
  8. ^ Lamine, Claire; Renting, Henk; Rossi, Adanella; Wiskerke, J. S. C.; Brunori, Gianluca (2012), Darnhofer, Ika; Gibbon, David; Dedieu, Benoît (eds.), "Agri-Food systems and territorial development: Innovations, new dynamics and changing governance mechanisms", Farming Systems Research into the 21st Century: The New Dynamic, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 229–256, doi:10.1007/978-94-007-4503-2_11, ISBN 978-94-007-4502-5, retrieved May 9, 2023
  9. ^ Rossi, Adanella (January 19, 2017). "Beyond Food Provisioning: The Transformative Potential of Grassroots Innovation around Food". Agriculture. 7 (1): 6. doi:10.3390/agriculture7010006. hdl:11568/893712. ISSN 2077-0472.
  10. ^ DeMuth, Suzanne (September 1993). "Defining Community Supported Agriculture". United States Department of Agriculture. Archived from the original on February 24, 2015. Retrieved February 28, 2015.