At first glance, this finding also contradicts recent studies that have compared the costs
for CSA and farmers’ market marketing channels. One study of four farms in central
NewYork that use direct marketing (including two CSA farms) found that “the CSA was
the top performing channel, based on ranked factors of volume, unit profits, labor
requirements and risk preferences,” but “optimizing sales requires the flexibility of
combining different channels” (LeRoux, Schmit, Roth, and Streeter 2010, 23). Similarly,
examining three CSA farms in California, Hardesty and Leff (2010, 32) found that
“marketing costs in the CSA channel were lower than those in the farmers’ market
channel for all three of our case-study farms.” Although Hardesty and Leff did not reveal
the identity of their cases, my study collected some of the same data, and I can triangulate
two case identities with reasonable certainty. These two operations are two of the most
professionally run CSAs in my sample of 54 CSA farms, meaning that their operators
have a great deal of experience running them and have spent decades streamlining their
operations—which puts them on the high end of Figure 1. Hardesty and Leff’s study, then, is likely not broadly representative of the range in Figure 1, so the greater profitability of the CSA channel is not necessarily widespread.