What is community supported agriculture (CSA)?


Community supported agriculture is a partnership between a farm and consumers where the risks and rewards of farming are shared.

CSAs exist from the US to Japan, across Europe and in Asia and Africa. Increasingly, people are self-organising their food distribution systems, and the CSA model is one way of doing just that!

There are four main principles in the CSA system:

PARTNERSHIP

CSAs are based on partnerships - usually formalised as an individual contract between each consumer and producer, and characterised by a mutual commitment to supply one another (with money or other payment and food) over an extended period of time - more than a single act of exchange. The contracts, oral or written, last for several months, a season or a year.

LOCAL

CSAs are part of an active approach to relocalising the economy. The idea is that local producers should be integrated into their surrounding areas: their work should benefit the communities which support them.

SOLIDARITY

CSAs are based on solidarity between producers and support groups and involve:
  • Sharing both the risks and benefits of healthy food production that is adapted to the natural rhythm of the seasons and which is respectful of the environment as well as natural and cultural heritage.
  • Paying a sufficient and fair price to enable farmers and their families to live in a dignified manner.

PRODUCER/CONSUMER LINKS

CSAs are based on direct person to person contact, without intermediaries or hierarchies.
"Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced 
through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and 
agriculture systems. It puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and 
consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and 
corporations."

Why do we need CSA systems?


There are lots of problems with the way food is produced, distributed and consumed in Ireland and across the world. Some of these are outlined below:

  • Control of the food system by large corporations, who use food to increase their shareholder profiuts. CSAs seek a food system controlled by communities to serve social well being and the environment.
  • Loss of small farms and the infrastructure they need: local mills, small abbatoirs etc
  • Loss of creative, meaningful and self-directed group as farm work is increasingly mechanized and controlled by large contractors
  • Unpredictable (often very low) incomes of farmers who must compete in a volatile global market
  • Loss of culture, community and a sense of belonging in rural areas
  • Loss of population in rural areas
  • Increasing dependence on oil-hungry food production and distribution systems
  • Loss of diversity of food types, seed varieties and cultivated biodiversity in the countryside
  • Poor animal welfare on large-scale industrial farms
  • Diet and health related problems caused by the consumption of over-processed food and the loss of cooking skills