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Winter 2005

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A Fruitful Partnership

A New Kind of Farm a New Breed of Farmer

Dear One Absent This Long While

Feature

A New Kind of Farm, a New Breed of Farmer
Community-supported agriculture changes the relationship between people and food

–Faye S. Wolfe




	photo by Ben Barnhart

ON A GLISTENING LATE-SUMMER MORNING in Hamilton, Massachusetts, Green Meadows Farm is ready for its close-up. Stocked with homegrown fresh produce—frilly salad greens, succulent red tomatoes, yellow onions, carrots—it’s a picture-perfect New England farm stand. And an up-to-date one, offering such organic foodstuffs as locally raised beef, maple syrup, raspberry jam, fair-trade coffee, Japanese noodles, and jasmine rice, as well as toys and hand-knit children’s sweaters in crayony colors.

Shoppers scrutinize kohlrabi, evaluate ears of corn, and jolly baby twins in matching red-striped outfits. Some are members of the farm picking up their share of food for the week. Andrew Rodgers ’96, the farm manager, strides among them, carrying a crate brimming with twisty, mottled green-and-maroon beans, each almost a foot long. A middle-aged woman eyes them dubiously. What are those? What do you do with them? Rodgers talks with her about the Vermont Cranberry beans, describing how they taste and how to cook them, and then the woman says cheerfully, “Well, I’ll try them.”

In a nutshell, or a bean pod, this is what community-supported agriculture (CSA, often shortened to “see-sah”) is about: bringing farmers and their customers together in a partnership both financial and cultural. Simple conversations like the one between Rodgers and a shareholder reflect a deeper and different relationship between the consumers and growers of food, a different attitude toward food itself. Chances are when most of us plunk a bag of apples into our shopping carts, we don’t have a clue where they came from (it could be Chile, New Zealand, or Washington state) or how they were grown, much less who grew them. The key concept behind CSA is that knowing the farmer growing your food results in better food, better farming, and better stewardship of the land. It’s a concept that got going in this country practically in the backyard of UMass Amherst.

The CSA model is straightforward. People buy shares of a farm’s next harvest, the farmer uses the money to grow food, and that food is then made available to the shareholders over the growing season. The benefits of the model are twofold. The farmer has capital when it’s needed most, and much of the usual risk involved in farming is eliminated; there are no refunds to investors, regardless of the abundance of the harvest. Most CSAs grow a wide array of produce, which minimizes the risk that shareholders won’t get enough, although from year to year some crops may do better than others. (Last year, for instance, Andrew Rodgers lost 3,000 heads of lettuce in 10 days to deer.) Shareholders are treated to a regular supply of fruits and vegetables from early summer through late fall, most made available for weekly pickup. Some, like strawberries, herbs, and flowers, are pick-your-own. CSA proponents would add one more significant benefit to the list: because community-supported agriculture emphasizes crop diversity and avoids the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, it produces food that is freer of potentially dangerous substances and is kinder to the environment.

CSA’s origins are variously traced to Japan and Europe. The Japanese counterpart of CSA, started in the early seventies, is called teikei, commonly translated as “putting the farmer’s face on food.” The owner of Indian Line Farm in South Egremont, Mass., the late Robyn Van En, was one of the key people behind CSA’s introduction in the United States. In 1986, Van En’s land became the site of a CSA experiment, as did the Temple-Wilton Farm in New Hampshire. Cathy Roth ’93G worked for 25 years as the Berkshire County–designated UMass Extension educator. As close friend of Van En, Roth became an early member of the Indian Line Farm CSA and an advocate for the CSA approach.

Roth came to agricultural Extension work via UMass Amherst. An elementary school teacher, she received her master’s from the School of Education in 1977. One of her professors suggested she might enjoy working with UMass Extension. “I didn’t know what ‘extension education’ was,” she recalls, but having grown up on an upstate New York dairy farm, she quickly discovered a liking and aptitude for the work.

In her role as a community educator, “providing information to farmers and community members,” Roth promoted the CSA model, and although she retired about a year ago is still a passionate advocate of CSA. When she says, “It’s no surprise that there are many more CSA farms in New England per capita than just about anywhere in the United States,” she’s not claiming responsibility, but people involved in one way or another with the CSA movement give her a lot of the credit for supporting Robyn Van En’s vision and encouraging CSA’s success in this part of the world.

Roth believes that research that “looks at CSA’s viability over the long haul” will bolster the case for CSA, confirming that, in her words, “it’s not just a sexy fad.” Dan Lass, a professor in the resource economics program at UMass Amherst, has been investigating the economic viability of the CSA model since the mid-1990s. “Cathy Roth was instrumental in getting me involved,” says Lass. “UMass is at the forefront in CSA.We were a leading institution early in the research—a lot started here.”

Lass has been collecting data on CSA costs and returns, and on the related areas of labor use and efficiency. He sees a great opportunity for CSAs, “especially in a state like Massachusetts, where there’s a good customer base: college-educated, with the ability to pay for and participate in CSA efforts.” And he sings the praises of CSA farmers: “They’re marvels at getting so much out of the land.”

At Green Meadows Farm, Andrew Rodgers grows 200 varieties of vegetables—including 30 varieties of heirloom tomatoes, and those exotic Vermont Cranberry beans, organically, on 18 acres. Such a range of produce reflects his “own eccentricity,” he admits, clearly pleased and proud of such successful experiments as raising artichokes last season.

Andrew’s interest in agriculture sprouted when he was an English major at UMass Amherst. He and his girlfriend, Diana Towle (now his wife), started a garden in the yard of a house behind the Northampton Stop & Shop. While still in college, Andrew and Diana ran a successful company called Indentured Servants. After graduation, they took jobs at a high-tech firm and ad agency, respectively. Andrew got back to his love of growing things by volunteering at an organic farm. Four years ago, after studying soil sciences and working on other farms, he was hired as farm manager at Green Meadows.

Despite a schedule that runs from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and “a little bit on Sundays,” Andrew says he’s got it good. He much prefers working outdoors at a variety of tasks to holding a desk job that requires a lengthy commute. He relishes such perks as having lunch every day with his year-old son, Anson. Diana Rodgers is very much a partner in the enterprise: when she’s not tending the baby and doing marketing for Whole Foods Market, she orders products for the stand and pitches in around the farm.

During the winter, Andrew creates succession-planting schemes on Excel spreadsheets and otherwise works on the “intricate planning required to meet the needs of the CSA.” Another essential part of the job is “community building,” says Rodgers. Like many CSAs, Green Meadows produces a newsletter, maintains a Web site, and holds potlucks and harvest festivals. Beyond that, “members are welcome to come any day of the week,” says Rodgers. “People spend hours here, picking berries, visiting the animals. The farm is home to such rare breeds as Royal Palm turkeys and Tamworth pigs.

This welcoming atmosphere also prevails at the Brookfield Farm in Amherst, founded in the 1970s by UMass Amherst professor David Steiner and his wife, Susan. According to manager Dan Kaplan, Brookfield was the third CSA in the United States. Thirty acres are given over to vegetables, with another 120 for hayfields and cow pasture.

“Brookfield is a demonstration farm,” says Kaplan. “Its mission is to educate about all aspects of sustainable agriculture.” Sometimes it fulfills that mission passively, says Kaplan: “Children come to the farm and see food growing.” They begin to understand how food gets its start in the earth, not the supermarket.

But the farm is a business, too, one that needs to be concerned with its bottom line to survive. Brookfield is overseen by a board of trustees. “It’s a profit center of a nonprofit,” explains Kaplan. “It has to make money.” And it does, partly because it has been around for a while. Green Meadows is not yet economically viable, Rodgers admits, but has made tremendous gains and expects to be in the black in
a few years.

Much thought and effort underlie Brookfield’s profitability. Some of it is fairly simple. “We fine-tune the mix of produce every year,” says Kaplan. To serve his Pioneer Valley customers there are some gotta-haves. “Corn, tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli, carrot, and squash are clearly the signature crops,” he says. To survive, Kaplan and the board must constantly wrestle trickier business decisions: Do we expand? What’s the upper limit? How do we manage growth? What are the tradeoffs?

Cynthia Barstow, an adjunct professor at UMass Amherst and author of The Eco-foods Guide What’s Good for the Earth Is Good for You, is one of Brookfield’s board members. With her marketing background coupled with concern for the state of agriculture, she is a persuasive promoter of Brookfield and CSAs in general. A wife and mother of two, she understands the reservations families might have about joining a CSA, stemming from busy schedules, the prospect of having too much food, and food you don’t know what to do with. But, she says, on a day jam-packed with things to do, faced with the question of what to cook for dinner, she finds answers as well as produce waiting for her when she goes to the farm: “I just cook what I pick up, and I don’t have to go the store and spend time examining labels.” Noting that many CSAs produce cookbooks and include recipes in weekly newsletters, Barstow says that the community that grows up around a CSA leads to informal mutual education—shareholders share cooking ideas over the arugula bins.

Sharing recipes, supporting local farms, and having a closer relationship to food are apparently ideas whose times have come: In 1999, the United States Department of Agriculture catalogued more than 1,000 CSA farms in the United States, from Alaska to West Virginia, serving over 100,000 households. Brookfield has a membership of about 570 families, 160 of them in Boston (their shares are trucked to the city weekly) with a retention rate of 85 percent. Green Meadows Farm, which started in its CSA operation in 2003 offering just 50 shares, expanded to 120 shares this year and sold out early. There’s a waiting list of more than 100 families, says Rodgers. Small potatoes? Maybe, but given how relatively new the CSA idea is and how much it diverges from mainstream thinking about agriculture and food in general, it’s impressive.

“CSA may become another enterprise on a farm,” one strategy among several by which farmers stay in business, suggests Lass. “Farming is becoming diversified, and Massachusetts is one of the most creative states in the nation in this regard. It leads the nation in sales-per-farm directly to consumers, way ahead of California, for instance.” Green Meadows is a good example of this creativity, with its hybrid offerings of CSA shares, a farm stand open to the public, firewood sales, wholesaling to local restaurants, and rental of the facilities for events like birthday parties.

Roth hopes that UMass Amherst will continue producing creative farmers like the Rodgers. “I would like people to know that farming is a viable choice for our graduates. It’s exciting: young people can make a living through farming, through the CSA model,” she says. With a characteristic note of enthusiasm mixed with wonder she adds, “Who would think you’d go to UMass Amherst to become a farmer in this day and age?”

1,300 - Average number of miles food in the U.S. travels from the farm to the market shelf.

85-90 - Percentage of food most states buy from someplace else.

97 - Percentage of CSA members who cite support for local farming as an important factor in their decision to join.

$1,000. - Average value of produce for every $500 CSA share.

6 - Number of months during which members receive produce (June-November).

10 - Average number of pounds of produce offered each week to each member.

Sources:

UMass Extension, North Carolina Cooperative Extension, and What’s Your Share Worth? by Jack P. Cooley and Daniel A. Lass.

For more information:
Robyn Van En Center for CSA Resources: www.csacenter.org
USDA’s Alternative Farming Systems Information Center: www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/csa/csastate.htm
UMass Extension CSA site: www.umass.edu/umext/csa/about.html

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A New Kind of Farm, a New Breed of Farmer

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