City folks are buying into the farm
By Ellen Simon
Associated Press
NEW YORK — Buy a share of a farmer's crop in an increasingly popular arrangement called community supported agriculture and your week's pick-up may be 20 pounds of tomatoes.
Or it may be an array of early summer greens, plus rhubarb, oregano and garlic shoots.
Or four heads of cabbage, five fennel bulbs, and three little pea pods in a wax paper bag.
There are no firm numbers, but as many as 100,000 households buy produce from as many as 1,500 Community Supported Agriculture farms, said John Hendrickson, an outreach specialist at a University of Wisconsin agricultural center.
Most of the buyers are willing to try unfamiliar vegetables in unpredictable quantity because they see CSAs as a mix of food and political activism.
David Anderson, a 60-year-old retired teacher in Alexandria, Minn., said his salary was paid by local taxes and so is his pension, so he joined a CSA to support the local economy.
In CSAs, a group of individuals band together to buy shares of a farmer's crop. Usually, they pay for the whole growing season in advance. The payments, made in late winter or early spring, sometimes cover all of the farm's operating expenses.
The idea, modeled on similar groups in Japan and Europe, has been gaining popularity in the United States since starting here about 20 years ago.
In Madison, Wis., about 8,000 people buy from CSAs, up from 1,000 12 years ago. In New York City, CSAs have grown from one in 1995 to 37 sites serving an estimated 10,000 people today, said Ruth Katz, executive director of Just Food, an organization that helps start and support CSAs.
In New York, a share averages $400 for the season, or $15 a week, Katz said. Many CSAs sell shares on a sliding scale. Some take food stamps or let members pay in installments. A Madison group sells cookbooks to raise money for loans to members who can't afford to pay for the season in advance.
"We definitely eat healthier now," said Cathryn Hubbard, who participates in the Madison loan program. "When you pay for all these vegetables, you hate to see them go to waste."
Most CSAs require a volunteer commitment from members, which usually means working the distribution tables at the pick-up once during the summer. But some farms require CSA members to either help with the harvest or work on the farm's administration.
Once harvest starts, CSA members get a weekly share as long as things on the farm grow. Some CSAs make home deliveries, but most have a weekly pick-up at either the farm or a central location — a suburban driveway, a community center or a church parking lot.
At a CSA in New York City's Chelsea neighborhood, pick-ups are at a settlement house in a housing project. At the season's first pick-up earlier this month everyone got two heads of buttercrunch lettuce, two heads of red romaine lettuce, one head of Chinese cabbage, one bunch of mizuna greens, a bunch of greens called bitamin, one bunch of rhubarb, one bunch of oregano and six garlic scapes (shoots), a regional delicacy.
"There's always a couple things I've never heard of — and I'm a foodie," said Matt Feifarek, 33, a Chelsea CSA member.
The variety can be daunting: Fresh Earth Farms in Minnesota grows 160 varieties of fruits and vegetables, including 10 kinds of garlic and 29 kinds of tomatoes.
"It's broadened our food horizons," CSA member Anderson said. "How many times have I cooked fennel in my life before we joined this?"
Sheer volume can be another challenge. Jeremy Lopez of Viroqua, Wis., got so many strawberries last year that he ended up making strawberry lemonade steeped with ginger. "I'm not thinking, 'Strawberries cost this much,' " he said. "I feel like I have more creative leeway."
Sometimes an expected bounty dies on the vine.
Upper Meadows Farm in Montague, N.J., planted peas last year, which did well until a 10-day heat wave. "I harvested four pounds of peas," farmer Leonard Pollara said. He distributed three pea pods to each CSA member.
"Some people ate their three pea pods and said, 'That's a shame,' " he said. "Other people made irate comments. They said, 'What am I supposed to do with three peas?' "
"CSAs are not for everybody," he said. "Some people are not willing to concede to the realities of seasonal production."
