Nick and I have joined a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program through the Kauai Farmers Co-op. I pick up my first box of locally grown, organic green love tomorrow evening.
If you live on Kauai and want to get involved email: kauaifarmerscoop@yahoo.com
Benefits of joining a local CSA near you:
1. Provides an easy budget for produce for a set number of weeks a year (or year round if you live with a continuous growing season)
2. Allows for a common-pricing system where producers and consumers discuss and democratically agree to pricing based on the acceptance of the budget
3. Creates a ‘shared risk and reward’ agreement, i.e. you eat what the farmers grow even with the vagaries of seasonal growing. Plus, it's fun to look in your box each week and say things like "ooooh kale" or "ok, so what exactly do I do with tumeric again?"
At the end of the day the result is that you do not pay for x pounds or kilograms of produce, but rather support the budget of the whole farm and receive weekly what is seasonally ripe. This approach eliminates the marketing risks and costs for the farmer in terms of time and peoplepower. It allows farmers to focus on quality care of soils, crops, animals, co-workers—and on serving the customers. There is little to no loss (i.e. waste) in this system, since the producers know in advance who they are growing for and how much to grow, etc.
So take that monocrops!
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We did this in Vermont and it was a great way to eat more vegetables and to try out different recipes than those you get from the same old dozen varieties available at the grocery store.
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