There was no ambiguity about what kind of community DeLind (1999) wanted to create
in the two years she spent developing and operating a CSA farm in Michigan. Community was
the reason behind community supported agriculture and this community required buy in and
membership. “For me” DeLind (1999) said, “if we were to build community we needed to share
both the vision and the effort…I felt that we shouldn’t cater to members as customers…To do
so…I argued, would undermine the basis for community” (p. 8). Although DeLind argued and
fought for community within her CSA farm organization, community, as she believed in it, did
not happen. “I believed this then and I believe it now. But I could not, for good reason, make it
happen. I could not change the world or even that small part in my own backyard” (p. 8).