CSA in the Northeast: Growing the Movement

CSA in the Northeast: Growing the Movement

Summary

Community supported agriculture (CSA), wherein producers and consumers establish seasonal partnerships, provides a compelling alternative for agricultural production and distribution. In the first year of this project, which built on previous Northeast SARE funding, we have improved and expanded services at the Robyn Van En Center for CSA Resources, strengthened links with national and other regional CSA support efforts, designed a research study, and held a conference that drew 350 farmers and other CSA supporters. We focused outreach on new farmers. We analyzed and reported on the 1999 CSA farm census.

Objectives/Performance Targets

The objectives of this project are to improve and expand egional support services to reach new users, promote the development of new CSA farmers through a regional conference, lead and manage national data management and research initiatives, sponsor a regional research project on priority CSA topics, and take final steps toward sustainability and self-sufficiency of the Robyn Van En Center.

Accomplishments/Milestones

The most visible accomplishment of this project was the Northeast CSA Conference III, held December 7 to 9, 2001 in New York. With nearly 350 registrants from 31 states and over forty workshops, the event was a huge success. We focused on attracting new farmers by offering a workshop track on farm start-up. Also, one of the four 6-hour mini-schools preceding the conference was on starting a CSA operation; it was attended by over 50 participants.

Initial feedback on the conference was very positive; tallies of evaluations are pending. The Robyn Van En Center managed a suite of support services for the CSA community. It responded to an average of 30 e-mail and other inquiries per week, a sizeable increase from the previous year. It upgraded the www.csacenter.org website, with new features such as job offerings. It managed the national CSA farm directory that contains nearly 800 farm listings. It responded to interview and publications requests, resulting in articles about CSA appearing in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, Yes Magazine, and In Business.

The project is sponsoring a research study. Dr. Daniel Lass, who is with the department of resource economics at the University of Massachusetts, and Jeremy Barker-Plotkin, a full-time farmer, have designed a survey tool that will investigate contributors to CSA farm viability. CSA farmers have been engaged in selecting the research question and designing the approach and the tool. It will be administered to CSA farmers in January 2002. The project researchers, including collaborating colleagues at the University of Wisconsin, produced a summary report of the 1999 census.

Long-term sustainability of the Robyn Van En Center is a key focus of this project. As a result of the 2000 Feasibility Study and Business Prospectus for RVEC and dialogue with its host institution, Wilson College, the project team has received assurance that RVEC will continue to be supported by Wilson College as a welcome core element of its Fulton Center for Sustainable Living. Its director wrote funding proposals for future RVEC support, in addition to his commitment to ongoing in-kind support.

Linking with national and other regional CSA support efforts is a key element of this project for two reasons. First, the RVEC is increasingly a national CSA service organization, operating within a framework that suggests that a national, regional and local nested service model is most effective to support the CSA community, so coordination with RVEC is essential. The other is that CSA support organizations at all levels can benefit from joint fund-raising efforts. To these ends, the project reached out to representatives from CSA support organizations in the Midwest, South, and West, and targeted funds to support their attendance at the conference. At the conference, twenty organizational representatives attended a five-hour mini-school, the focus of which was to build the national network of CSA support organizations and to discuss funding to support RVEC as well as local and regional programs.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

Results to date include the increased visibility of CSA due to outreach by the Robyn Van En Center, increased service to the CSA community as measured by numbers of inquiries to RVEC (and hits on the website directory and other features) by farmers, potential shareholders and interested others, knowledge and skills acquired by 350 conference participants, increased awareness and cooperation among CSA support organizations nationally, and a commitment from the host institution to house and support RVEC into the future.

Collaborators: