P L E N T Y SUMMER 2019 Plenty Summer 2019-joomag copy | Page 20

O
n a beautiful late spring
afternoon in the Ag Reserve,
cars turn into our farm and
pull up to the little red house
that serves as the distribu-
tion site for our Community
Supported Agriculture (CSA)
shares. Kids pile out and run
to visit the pigs or the tractors while adults prepare
bags and coolers to carry their shares home. Inside,
the little red house smells like freshly picked mint and
scallions. Shareholders peruse the colorful crates of
vegetables displayed along the walls, the freezer full of
sustainably raised meat, and the refrigerator stocked
with eggs. They laugh, chat and share recipes, thinking
about the week ahead and the meals that they’ll make.
Some have brought picnics, and some simply enjoy the
chance to sit in the sunshine, away from the sounds
of the city, and talk to their farmers. This is what it’s
like on any given Thursday at our CSA pickup at Plow
and Stars Farm in Montgomery County’s Agricultural
Reserve.
How CSAs took root
Community
Supported
Agriculture Is
a Win-Win
for Everyone
BY AMANDA CATHER
20
PLENTY I SUMMER GROWING 2019
The CSA model in the United States was created in
the mid 1980s, based on a Japanese model known as
teikei, by the staff and customers of two small farms in
New England. They envisioned CSA as a partnership in
which shareholders paid farmers up front at the begin-
ning of the season for a portion of the season’s harvest.
They intended the relationship between producer and
buyer to be long-term and in-depth, with the key ele-
ment of shared economic risk taking it beyond simply
transactional to something deeper and more power-
ful. Its core principles included the elimination of any
middleman between farms and customers; ongoing
two-way communication about growing practices and
customer preferences; and the creation of a balance
between a living wage for farmers and farmworkers and
affordable and accessible food for members.
Today, there are over 5,000 CSA farms in the
United States. Somewhere around 20 of these are
located in Montgomery County, including our own,
Plow and Stars Farm, founded in 2014. My own relation-
ship with the CSA model goes back more than 20 years,
when I became a shareholder at Vanguarden CSA in
Dover, Massachusetts. I loved the food, but I yearned