CSA production becomes even more complex when farms must juggle CSA production with
other marketing strategies. As a farmer explains,
To be a CSA, to do farmers’ markets and to do specialty wholesale, you have to do this
incredible plethora of varieties so you always have something to sell. You need to keep it
interesting for the CSA customers, keep it competitive at the farmers’ market, have
something for the specialty wholesalers, have something to keep the crew working and
keep us in cash flow, to keep the whole thing spinning. That’s why, when I think of
somebody who’s a cannery grower, I think “that’s dead easy.”
As another farmer explains,
The easiest juxtaposition would be to look at the large-scale conventional farms around
here. They grow a handful of crops, and the “diversified farms” grow 3 or 4 crops. We
grow over 50 different crops, and within those crops we grow up to 50 different varieties.
So, in the end, our actual different variety list is over a thousand items.
From an agricultural standpoint, growing such a large number of different crops and varieties –
each of which has its own production requirements – can be seen as an “orchestration.” As a
farmer explains,
It’s very complicated with the CSA, with crop rotations and everything that we do.
Rotations are within a smaller area and we have to hand weed some areas, while
cultivating some areas with the tractor. Water this, don’t water that. Transplanting is
going on next to this bed. It’s much more of an orchestration.
Growing so many varieties can also result in higher production costs for CSAs, as economies of
scale decrease. As a farmer notes,
If you look at a per box cost to produce something, any time you increase the number of
boxes that you’re producing, the cost to produce that decreases. It’s more efficient to