Asian Vegetable Club

Commodities

Practices

For the 2025 growing season, Choy Commons will launch Asian Vegetable Club, an Asian vegetable CSA led by women and nonbinary Asian American farmers for the Asian American community in New York City. Asian Vegetable Club addresses a critical gap in the sustainable local food market by meeting the high demand for fresh, high-quality Asian produce among Asian food consumers. The farms involved in the Choy Commons farm cooperative include Gentle Time Farm, Choy Division, and Star Route Farm. Outreach surveys have revealed significant interest, with 730 potential customers enrolled in our waitlist from Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx.

Key components of the work plan include conducting targeted outreach to Asian communities, establishing accessible CSA distribution sites with community partners, training site leads on running distribution dates, coordinating trucking logistics and drop-off schedules across three farms and all distribution sites, developing standardized operating procedures (SOPs) with distribution sites, collaborative planning and growing culturally relevant crops, producing educational materials about the preparation and storage of culturally relevant crops, and organizing events to engage and educate CSA members.

Results will be assessed through enrollment and retention metrics, feedback from CSA members, and the financial stability of the farms.

Objective 1: Grow and aggregate culturally relevant Asian vegetables collaboratively with Choy Division (Chester, NY), Gentle Time (Chatham, NY), and Star Route Farm (Charlotteville, NY) to supply 300 CSA members.

Activities:

• Execute a detailed crop plan focusing on Asian vegetables including but not limited to bitter melon, Thai basil, long beans, napa cabbage, gai lan, and celtuce.
• Distribute 50,000 pounds of fresh produce seasonally through the CSA program.
• Perform weekly field activities, including irrigation, field preparation, cover cropping, transplanting, and cultivation.
• Conduct weekly harvesting and packing of CSA shares, valued at an average of $35 per share, offered at sliding scale pricing.
• Clean totes, equipment, and tools regularly.
• Maintain weekly communication between farms to aggregate products and confirm shared items and quantities.
• Maintain weekly communication between Choy Commons and CSA members to improve education about food items and sustain high quality customer engagement.
• Implement a shared tracking system for crop yields and CSA sales using a spreadsheet.
• Keep up with all accounting, invoicing, and billing
• Collaboratively crop plan as 3 farms in winter 2025 for the 2026 season
• Develop and curate culturally relevant recipes from range of AAP cultures (East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian) for CSA members throughout the season. Include recipes and instructions for meal preparation and produce preservation. Include cultural context and ancestral history. Develop for distribution through email and social media.

Timeline:

• June-January 2025
• June-January 2025

Objective 2: Execute delivery, and coordinate logistics at CSA distribution sites

Activities:

• Maintain active communication threads with all project partners.
• Collaborate closely with site leads to address delivery challenges, provide updates on weekly vegetable shares, and track pick-up numbers.
• Send weekly box counts and location information for CSA pick-up sites to Essex Food Hub, our trucking delivery partner.
• Coordinate with Essex Food Hub for the pick-up and return of totes to farms.

Timeline:

• June-November 2025
• June - November 2026

Objective 3: Integrate SNAP users into Asian Vegetable Club

Activities:

• Collaborate with nonprofit partners including Asian Americans for Equality and Welcome to Chinatown to grow SNAP CSA participation to 25-50 members by 2026 and 100 families by 2029.
• Align all partners on the SNAP CSA project goals, timeline, roles, and responsibilities.
• Gather insights about the community's needs and barriers to accessing CSA programs.
• Develop a payment agreement program that aligns with community needs, while incentivizing SNAP members to return each week (a proven barrier and challenge for CSA members paying with SNAP).
• Identify outreach and enrollment strategies for SNAP participants.
• Coordinate roles for CSA educational workshop facilitation and logistics (e.g., venue, childcare, translation).
• Develop and distribute marketing materials for SNAP/EBT participants in Chinese.

Timeline

November 2025 - November 2026

Objective 4: Strengthen a community-owned, local food system through education and engagement.

Activities:

• Meet with the core planning team to design a plan, program, and structure for farm tours
• Organize and host 3 farm tours/year to introduce members to growers and the growing process and to build connections between CSA community members and growers.
• Create and execute three educational workshops on-farm about Asian vegetables and their cultural significance with an emphasis on farmers and community members to understand food needs better.
• Co-evaluate workshops with community organizations and members in successive years.
• Monitor progress and address ongoing challenges during the CSA season.
• Plan topics and schedule dates for pre-season, mid-season, and post-season workshops and farm tours.
• Coordinate evaluation measures through end-of-season review between farms and nonprofit partners.
• Assess the volume and capacity of the program at the end of each season to inform plans for the following year.

Timeline:
November 2025 - November 2026

Anticipated Outcomes:

• A robust CSA program supplying culturally relevant produce to 300 members with high retention rates each year.
• A streamlined logistics system supporting efficient delivery and pick-up operations.
• Increased access to fresh, local produce for SNAP/EBT participants, with measurable growth year-over-year.
• Stronger community connections through education, engagement, and collaboration.
• Secured market access for Choy Commons farms