Shi Yan’s first CSA project, Little Donkey Farm, had its inaugural season of operation in 2009. From the start, the farm was affiliated with Renmin University and NRR, emerging as one project within a mosaic of initiatives in the rural reconstruction tradition. The first staff members at the farm had been fellows at the James Yan Institute for Rural Reconstruction, a short-lived Renmin-affiliated nonprofit in Dingzhou, Hebei, the site of one of the most famous pre-war rural reconstruction bases. Currently, Little Donkey’s sister organizations include the Liang Shuming Rural Reconstruction Center, which supports the development of farmer cooperatives through rural community organizing, and Ground Green Union, which serves as a sales cooperative for products from rural farmer cooperatives. The meaning of the CSA model in China is closely tied to this historical and institutional context of rural reconstruction: it is understood as a means of harnessing ‘alternative’ cooperative economic arrangements to improve the incomes and standing of rural smallholders. In this sense, CSA is very much of a family with farmer-run cooperatives in China: both models offer solutions for small farmers facing the vagaries of massive markets in which they are forced to be price-takers.