Instead of a CSA, How About Agriculture-Supported Community?

Jason Mark is a columnist for Change.org's Sustainable Food cause. He is a co-author of Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots and the editor of Earth Island Journal. When he's not writing, he co-manages San Francisco's Alemany Farm, a four-acre organic fruit and vegetable garden in the city.

In the last decade, community supported agriculture (or CSA) programs have become increasingly popular as people look for ways to get sustainable, locally produced food they can trust. A CSA, in case you’re new to the idea, is a program in which your household gets a subscription or a membership with a specific farm in your region and every week receives a box of fresh produce, and in some cases, meat, eggs, and grains. Twenty-five years ago, just a handful of farms in the United States offered CSA programs. Now, according to the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) 2007 farm census, there are 12,500 CSAs in the country serving some quarter of a million households.

CSAs are growing in number and size in part because they appeal to our desire for building relationships. Sure, consumers initially sign up to CSAs for the food; but often they stick around for the people. Over time, as CSA members get to know the people who are growing their food — whether through the weekly newsletters that many CSAs have, or annual farm visits and festivals — they come to feel a loyalty to their farmers. That spirit of kinship forms the heart of the CSA model: A farm is sustained by the passion of its customers.

Of course, any healthy relationship is a two-way street. If the CSA members are sustaining the farm financially, the farm is also sustaining its members by providing them with sustenance. This is how it’s always been: farms and gardens are the foundation, the very pre-requisites, of any civilization. So shouldn’t we also be talking about agriculture-supported communities?

I got this idea from Jeremy Smith, a journalist in Missoula, Montana who is author of a new book, Growing a Garden City, about the thriving local agriculture scene in his hometown. As Smith says, “Our food associations are that hippies grow food and that yuppies buy it and eat it. The next stage of the local food movement isn’t topping out at trendy restaurants. It’s spreading out into new places.” From Smith’s Mountain State vantage point, one of the greatest virtues of local agricultural is that it creates the personal connections that form a community.

I met Smith last month while I was in Montana for the annual Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) conference. The scribblers gathered in Missoula discussed all sorts of issues at the four-day gathering: climate change, the BP disaster, the Canadian tar sands, biodiversity and conservation, and the challenges of reporting the news in an era of shrinking newsrooms. Also on the agenda was sustainable food. When the media magazine NewsPro surveyed SEJ members on the eve of the conference and asked them what they thought was the most “positive environmental trend in the U.S.,” more than one-fifth of respondents said “the local agriculture movement.”

A great example is the University of Montana’s farm-to-college program, which appears to be a huge success. In 2008, 20 percent of the university’s cafeteria food came from either Montana or the states immediately adjacent. The campus spent half a million dollars buying from Montana farms and ranches in 2010. “For local foods, the shelf life is better, it tastes better,” says Mark LoParco, who runs the campus dining services. Another advantage, LoParco says, is that the program demonstrates to Montana lawmakers that “the university system doesn’t just suck money, it also puts money back into the state economy.” He adds, “Some local companies have told me that if we weren’t buying from them, they’d be out of business. So we’re having our desired effect.”

The university’s prioritization of Montana farms and ranches is classic community-supported agriculture. Local eaters are keeping local farmers in business. Smiths says that he sees the converse — agriculture-supported community — in the constellation of urban and suburban farms and gardens sprouting up around Missoula, a town known as the “Garden City” because it once provided most of the food for the surrounding mines.

Smith’s Growing a Garden City is a Studs Terkel-like collection of interviews with Missoula farmers, foodies, teachers, and students. In reading the book and listening to these voices, Smith’s idea of agriculture-supported community — “a community bound … by local food and farming” — became clear. I heard it in the words of Tim Hall, a community garden director, when he spoke about how “at the gardens, neighbors meet, and rich and poor interact. … Meeting people in adjacent parcels. Talking, teaching, learning.” I also heard it from Greg Price, the manager of the River Road Community Garden: “You can read The Omnivore’s Dilemma all day long, but you’re not going to fully get what community means unless you get out and participate.”

What I found most impressive and inspirational about the Missoula local food scene is that it’s happening in a place that many people might not associate with sustainable agriculture. Smith says as much: “If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere. This is not Berkeley, this is not Brooklyn. We have a 20 percent poverty rate and a frost-free growing season that’s less than 100 days.”

Agriculture supported community — it’s not a trend. It’s simply a return to how things have always been done.