Results and Discussion
Basic characteristics of CSA farms
All of the Hungarian operations are new in terms of their CSA trade. The “oldest,” started in 2010 and three
farms just began in 2013, so all have started in the last few years. These CSAs have been operating for 2.5
years on average. Three of the ten operations started using CSA practices from inception. Two experienced
organic farmers had long-term experience in “CSA-like” programs prior to the start of their current
enterprises. Each studied farm employs ecological production practices and seven of the ten (70%) are
organically certified. The area of cropland under production for the farms ranges from 0.2 ha at the smallest
to 10 ha for the largest. In the share-model systems where production is only distributed to shareholders,
most of the farmland is used for vegetable production. The average current membership/number of box
deliveries was 38 (N=10) as of March 2013 and ranges from five to 80. For all of the initiatives having at least one year of history, most of members/frequent customers have continued and most operations show an increase in membership.