Although these ideals underpinned the original conception, the way CSA works in practice is different. In their 2001 national CSA survey, Lass et al. (2003, 22) reported that farmers’ wages and benefits are typically not covered in a satisfactory manner in CSA operations: “More than 48 percent were unsatisfied … with their own (the farmer's) compensation … More than 68 percent were unsatisfied with their financial security (health insurance, retirement, etc) … [CSA farmers] seem to neglect the costs associated with their own compensation.” Smaller-scale qualitative studies have presented similar conclusions (Cone and Myhre 2000; Jarosz 2008). Thus, while CSA was created as a more socially embedded exchange relationship offering a fair wage for farmers, many CSA farmers are not receiving satisfactory compensation. Self-exploitation in CSA appears to be occurring, despite the social embeddedness of CSAs as an exchange relationship. This is an interesting contradiction. To make sense of it, I present a framework for understanding the distribution of surplus value in CSAs and populate it with qualitative and quantitative data from research in California.