interaction and cooperation inherent in the CSA’s practical arrangements create certain
possibilities:
1. For farmers to know the needs of the community before beginning to work the
land.
2. For the consumers to have an opportunity to express to the farmers what their
food needs and financial limits are.
3. For commitments to be consciously established between farmers and
consumers.
4. For the farmers’ needs to be recognized, thus freeing them to serve the
community.
I was aware of the CSA movement in this country from its beginning and had
many opportunities to speak with participants about the conceptual basis and practical
arrangements associated with various farms. During the early years of the CSA
movement I was managing a farm store on a 400-acre Biodynamic farm that marketed the
farm’s products along with products from other sustainable farms regionally and
nationally.
Altogether I had accumulated nearly twenty years of experience working in small
businesses at a variety of level—production, distribution, marketing, and retail and
wholesale sales. Thus I was able to gain some insight into agricultural economics and the
workings of the economy in general. As store manager I made every possible effort to
promote sales of the farm’s products and to obtain equitable prices. I also made efforts to
educate consumers as much as possible about the methods and needs of the farm, through
conversations in the store, meetings, newsletters, workshops, and farm tours. But in the
end my impression was that under the existing economic conditions there was a gap
between producers and consumers that could not be bridged. The marketplace, with all
the economic forces working through it, acts more as a barrier than as a bridge between
producers and consumers.
It was with great interest that I entered into conversations concerning the CSA
movement. Many of the initial conversations focused on the role and position of
agriculture in the economy. For many farmers, their experiences had led them to the
conviction that sustainable agriculture cannot survive under present economic conditions.
Fluctuating market prices often do not meet the costs of production; escalating real estate
prices inhibit the creation of new farms; and a nature-based production that is susceptible
to climatic changes creates a higher degree of risk than industrial production. It is for
good reasons that an increasing number of Biodynamic and organic farmers are becoming
bitter about their experiences in the market. This has created in them a desire to seek a
new social and economic basis for agriculture.
I met with three perspectives concerning the relation of agriculture to the
economy:
1. Agriculture should be removed from the economy altogether. It is primarily a
cultural activity of tending and cultivating the land, and the food that is produced is a byproduct of this activity. Therefore the nature of agriculture is different from that of
industry.
2. Agriculture is a part of the economy. But true agriculture that does not exploit
nature cannot compete in the economy as does industry; it needs special conditions in
order to function. For instance, most sustainable farms are not in a position to pay land
mortgages based on existing market values. Therefore, ways need to be found to make
land available for agriculture at low or no cost.
3. Part of agriculture is in the economy and part of it is not. Adherents of this
perspective usually cite the activity of harvest as the dividing line. Cultivation, planting,
and growing up to the point of harvest is seen as a cultural, tending activity. Once
harvesting takes place, the food takes on a commodity character and enters the economic
process.
All these perspectives are based on the feeling that true agriculture, which has not
been converted to agribusiness, cannot survive in an economy in which there are
fluctuating prices, little consumer loyalty, escalating land prices, and the exploitation of
natural and human resources. But the reason for rejecting these conditions should not
merely be because they are inherently inappropriate and harmful, no matter what is being
produced and consumed. In the existing market the farmer meets the same forces and is
compelled to compete out of the same self-interested and profit motive as every other
producer. A farmer who still maintains a living connection with the land is in a unique
position to offer a perspective on the effects that such economic conditions have on
nature. And therefore, it makes sense that such farmers would be among the first to reject
some of the main components of our present economy. But rather than trying to withdraw
farming from or insulate it against the negative aspects of our present economy, it would
benefit everyone in the long run if agriculture could be seen as the place to build up an
economy on a new basis. The most basic necessity of earthly life, food, can provide the
starting point for moving from our present government-guided, production-driven market
economy, which is based on competition, to an independent, associative economy based
on consumer needs and conscious, rational decisions between producers and consumers.
[See “The Distribution of Wealth,” The Threefold Review, Issue No. 9, Summer/Fall
1993.]