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Eat Local Through Community Supported Agriculture | By Julia Green
Every Monday and Friday during the summer, families descend on ZJ Farms to pick up their share of fresh vegetables and herbs. Depending on what point in the summer it is, each weekly basket might contain spinach, kohlrabi, okra, arugula, bok choy, tomatoes, squash, beets, eggplant, basil, parsley, or something else that Susan Jutz, owner of ZJ Farms, has decided to grow. Two hundred families belong to her CSA (which stands for Community-Supported Agriculture). In exchange for purchasing an up-front share of produce at the beginning of the year, members receive a weekly basket of fruits and vegetables. The shares keep Jutz in business and enable her to purchase the necessary organic fertilizers and materials for the year, and the families receive the freshest, healthiest produce available. “The CSA is the only way someone small can make a living,” Jutz says.
Families that pick up their produce directly from Jutz’s 80-acre farm get a bonus gift. “When the kids see the farm, they get really excited about vegetables,” she says. And the adults benefit too. Although they’re not all sure how to prepare okra, many recipes are often traded during share pick-up time, and there’s an email list that CSA members maintain to keep track of culinary innovations.
The unpredictability and seasonal variety of CSA baskets is one of the best paets of a CSA membership, says Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (which was named one of the ten best books of 2006 by both The New York Times and The Washington Post). He writes, “The box gets you out of your shopping rut and invites you to try new things and consult your languishing cookbooks.” In other words, they bring the excitement back to the age-old question, “What’s for dinner?”
For those who think that CSAs are a luxury available only to the very well-off, Pollan disagrees. “CSAs are a good solution for people hoping to eat well-grown, local, and seasonal food on a budget. A lot of people think they can’t afford such food, but very often the CSA box is a bargain.” A large share from ZJ Farms, which “provides enough vegetables for a family of vegetable-loving eaters,” comes out to $31.75 a week. For a family of four, that means less than eight dollars per person for a week’s worth of veggies. This might seem like a lot to some families, but Jutz says, “We need to educate people about the real cost of food. In the U.S., we’ve been on a cheap food program for so long. But for quality food, consumers are going to have to pay a little more.”
Jutz hosts workshops to introduce children to life on the farm and teaches classes on sustainable agriculture at the nearby university. One of the topics she covers at length is the farm bill. “Every consumer should be concerned with the farm bill—it affects everything that we eat. It rewards people for growing monoculture commodity crops and not for conservation practices.”
By commody crops, Jutz is referring to the corn and soybeans that are grown to excess in the United States and for which farmers receive substantial subsidies from the government, while small, organic farmers like Jutz receive none. From her CSA profits, Jutz must cover all her expenses—including the increasingly steep prices of health care.
Pollan, who directs the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, details the flaws of the subsidized commodity system in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which explains how surplus genetically modified corn is dumped on the global market, causing small-scale farmers in developing companies to go bankrupt. Here in the U.S., most commodity crops are used to feed cows and chickens raised in confinement. These animals are given substantial quantities of hormones and antibiotics that end up in our food. Fortunately, many small-scale sustainable farms offer alternatives. Free-range animals raised on rotational grazing are happier animals—and healthier to eat. Small-scale farms also compost animal manure for fertilizer rather than allowing it to pollute waterways.
Locally grown food is better for you and the environment—it’s fresher, more healthful, and simply tastes better. Although it may seem a luxury to pay more for CSA food than grocery-store food, it may not be such a significant luxury in the years to come. As gas prices continue to rise, so will prices in the grocery store. Instead of buying food that’s come from thousands of miles away, consider joining a local CSA for produce that’s more nutritional, flavorful, and environmentally sustainable.3 Reasons to Join a CSAIt’s absolutely the freshest, most healthful food you can get your hands on – no pesticides, no food miles, no losing nutrients during the long journey to the grocery store.
It provides local farmers with the resources to continue producing organic produce and distributing it locally.
By choosing to be a part of the local food movement, you are telling the U.S. government, who provides subsidies to industrial farmers encouraging the continued overproduction of commodity crops, that we can—and must—do much better.
Find a Farm Near You:
Log on to www.localharvest.org for a comprehensive list of CSAs in every region of the United States.