FOODSHED

Photograph: Carole Topalian

TO SHARE OR
NOT TO SHARE

The risks and rewards of community-supported
agriculture—from the farmer’s perspective.

BY JARED FLESHER

CSA stands for community-supported agriculture, one of the great success stories of the local food movement. In 1986, the first two CSA farms in the United States opened for business, one in New Hampshire, the other in Massachusetts. Today, there are several thousand CSAs across the country.

I ask Kinsel to explain how a CSA works—from a farmer’s, rather than a customer’s, perspective.

“It’s like having a pail of water with holes in the bottom,” he says. “You have the opportunity of having this large pool of money at the beginning of the season, and then it’s kind of a race to the finish. You’re trying to hold onto as much of it as you can, to make the farm viable.”

Risks and Rewards

CSAs are based on the principle that local farms thrive when the risks and rewards of a growing season are shared between consumers and the farmer. In practice, what this usually means is that CSA members pay their farmer at the beginning of a season and then receive a box of fresh produce each week. Some CSAs require on-farm pickup; others deliver to communities an hour or more away. Most of the first CSAs were organic, but many conventional farms have begun to adopt the model, too. The one commonality among all is the idea that members become a kind of “shareholder” in the farm they choose to support. These members often end up with more vegetables during a good growing season and fewer vegetables during a poor season, but one way or the other the farmer can count on a guaranteed level of income.

The first American CSAs were inspired by the 1920s teachings of Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, father of biodynamic agriculture. In addition to his advocacy of organic principles, Steiner believed that consumers and producers should be linked by a mutual interest. His ideas began to take root in post–World War II Europe, where CSA farms were established in Germany and Switzerland in the 1960s and 70s. These farmers then carried the CSA idea with them to New England in the 1980s.

The rise of industrial agriculture inspired similar counter-movements across the globe. CSA-like models gained popularity in Japan in the late 1960s and Chile in the early 1970s. The common thread? All these groups were determined to safeguard their community’s access to local, healthy, chemical-free food.

Success and Sustainability at Honey Brook Organic Farm Honey Brook Organic Farm, originally called Watershed Organic Farm, began modestly in 1991. Jim Kinsel had a college degree in mathematics, professional experience as an actuary, and three years of farming apprenticeships under his belt, but no land.

Starting a CSA was someone else’s idea. Kinsel gives the credit to his then business partner, Jeff Schahczenski, who was a student of political science and sociology. At the time, the Stony Brook– Millstone Watershed Association, in Pennington, was looking for an organic farmer to take over a farm it had started a few years prior. Schahczenski and Kinsel convinced the Watershed to lease the land to them and let them start a CSA.

That first year, 50 local families signed up for a share in the farm. After the capital costs of the farming season, there wasn’t much left over from the original bucket of money collected in the spring. “I think we made $8,000,” Kinsel recalls. “And we had to split that up two ways.”

Schahczenski decided to leave Honey Brook after that lean first year, but Kinsel decided to stick with it. He believed demand for local organic produce was rising, and supply in New Jersey was still low. Kinsel made a defining decision—he’d use money raised from CSA sales to increase the farm’s efficiency as quickly as possible.

“The CSA allowed us to purchase equipment earlier than we would have otherwise,” Kinsel says. “I started going to auctions very early and saw a wealth of equipment and implements that could make the job easier and more productive. I always thought we would have to look—at least mechanically—more like a conventional farm in order to make it work. A lot of organic farmers were kind of going in the other direction, where everything was done by hand.” And the rest, as they say, is New Jersey organic farming history. Kinsel increased production, and soon the CSA was well positioned to meet a sudden, surging demand for all things local, organic and sustainable. With help from his partner (and wife), farm planner Sherry Dudas, the CSA kept pace. Twenty years since those first 50 families signed up, membership has increased by about 6,000 percent.

In 2007, the success of the CSA enabled Kinsel and Dudas to finally achieve a different kind of sustainability. They used money earned farming on the land they lease in Pennington to purchase a farm of their own in Chesterfield.

Weighing the Options

For many start-up farmers in the Garden State today, one of the first financial questions they must ask themselves is “Farmers’ market or CSA?” Farmers’ markets generally yield the highest prices, but CSAs offer guaranteed income and that early season capital.

Nicole Porto weighed these options in light of her own situation and decided CSA. This past spring, between working shifts as a waitress, she started Eagle Hill Farm CSA on one-third of an acre in Rockleigh, about as far north in northeast Jersey as you can get. She found a local nursery school that would let her use its parking lot as a distribution site. She signed up 12 CSA members at $700 a share, and needed to turn away at least 10 more.

“Some people called right away, all excited, saying, ‘I’ve been looking for a CSA. I’m signing up today.’ There are rural farmers who literally drive through my town to go sell their stuff in New York City. Meanwhile, there’s really not much local food available right here.” Porto soon realized, however, one of the challenges inherent to the CSA model. Especially for a beginning farmer with a small operation, a CSA can feel like being under a microscope.

“If I only have nine beautiful butternut squashes then that’s all I have, but I have 12 members, so I need to have enough of everything for 12 people,” Porto explains. “It’s been really stressful living up to the promise I’ve made to these families. Every week, it’s a little bit of a panic about, ‘Am I going to have enough stuff?’”

Looking back on her decision, Porto says she cherishes the relationships she’s built with her CSA members, and the experience has been valuable, but she’s not so sure a CSA was the right choice. “Honestly, I wouldn’t do it again,” she says. “I want to try doing a market.”

Farmers’ Market vs. CSA

I visit Cherry Grove Organic Farm, in Lawrenceville, on a Tuesday afternoon. Cars are moving up and down a long stone driveway. It’s a pickup day for many of the 300 families who belong to the farm’s CSA.

Inside of the barn, CSA members are weighing out their weekly share of certified organic vegetables. Out in the fields, other members are picking an assortment of flowers, herbs and cherry tomatoes. I overhear Mary Stuehler, who manages the business side of the CSA, gently inform a member that she has picked the flowers off an okra plant. It’s no big deal, and an easy mistake to make, but something she should avoid in the future.

I spot Matt Conver, the farmer here, out near a field of sweet potatoes.

“The sweet potatoes are great this year,” he says. “Insanely big.” Members are headed home this week with three-pound potatoes. But the pumpkins have not fared nearly so well. “We’ve had a really wet summer and fall,” Conver explains. Record-setting amounts of rain have destroyed entire crops of pumpkins across the Northeast, including most of the pumpkins at Cherry Grove Organic.

So it goes.

Conver likely understands the advantages and disadvantages of the CSA model as well as anyone. For ten years, Cherry Grove Organic has offered a full-featured CSA, but it also sells at two farmer’s markets each week, one in Summit, the other in Princeton. This is what Conver has gleaned: During years when the weather is good and nothing particularly crazy happens, his farm would be more profitable if he sold exclusively at farmer’s markets. Conver can usually sell as much as he can grow, and the markets are where the best prices are. In comparison, his CSA members pay $700 for a share and most years receive the retail equivalent of $1,500 to $2,000 in organic produce.

But during challenging farming years, that equation can change. Two years ago, Cherry Grove Organic lost nearly its entire crop of tomatoes to a region-wide tomato blight. Conver’s CSA helped cushion the blow from lost retail sales, and the CSA members seemed to understand that no tomatoes was just something they’d have to live with.

“When the blight happened, I offered a partial refund to members,” Conver says. “Nobody took me up on it.”

Back in the barn, I find Stuehler explaining to a member that yes, it’s true, there will be hardly any pumpkins this year. The member sounds disappointed, but then again, she’s going home with insanely big sweet potatoes.

Later, Stuehler tells me that the members who reap the greatest benefit from the CSA model are those who develop a plan to use the wide variety of produce they receive each week. This can mean cooking with unfamiliar vegetables, and canning surpluses for use in the winter. But in addition to the great savings the CSA can provide— veggies at more than 50 percent below retail prices—she also sees rewards that are intangible. Maybe even life affirming.

“When you join a CSA, you relearn seasonality,” Stuehler explains. “We’ve gotten so far away from that in our society because you can go into the grocery store and buy anything.”

Before Jim Kinsel gets back on his tractor, the last question I ask him is about advice to farmers just starting out. CSA or farmers’ markets? His answer is that ... it depends. CSAs seem to offer the most benefits once they get big, he says—perhaps 500 members or more, when economies of scale really start to kick in. Until then, the higher prices customers are willing to pay at farmers’ markets might bring in more revenue for the same amount of produce.

But there are other factors to consider, he says. For one, the incredible growth of small farms in New Jersey means that farmers’ markets are beginning to become saturated with local growers. Every year, it becomes more difficult for new farmers to find lucrative markets to join. “Another advantage of CSA is that’s it’s a form of guerilla marketing,” he says. “All you need is a host family with a front porch and you’re good to go.” n

Editor’s note: For a list of New Jersey CSAs, visit localharvest.org. Although the majority of Garden State CSAs operate during the spring through fall seasons, most are accepting membership applications now for 2012.

Jim Kinsel, Honey Brook Organic Farm, Chesterfield
Photographs: Jared Flesher

One of the first questions [a start-up farmer] must ask themselves is “Farmers’ Market or CSA?” Farmers’ markets generally yield the highest prices, but CSAs offer guaranteed income and that early season capital.