To CSA or Not to CSA

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) can be a great local food solution and definitely brings members up close and personal with the issues and challenges farmers face in bringing labour-intensive product to market while trying to make a living wage.

On the other hand, it may not be for everyone, as Bob Morris makes clear in his New York Times contribution, On This Farm There Was Animosity.

Love the concept or hate it, only the most rigid idealist won’t be able to laugh at one man’s entertaining if begrudging experience:

“I don’t care if it’s good for you, because to me kale has always been a four-letter vegetable. We seemed to have a lifetime supply this summer courtesy of the local community-supported agriculture farm. When Ira, my spouse, told me he signed us up for $575 last spring, I balked at the cost. Did it really make sense? Our little Long Island weekend town already has a farm stand and a grocer with local produce…

I don’t do well with rations, cooperation or the righteous, and the weekly e-mails we started getting from the farm were rich with the passion of latter-day locavores. We were encouraged to learn to compost and constantly asked to help the manager and his apprentices with the farm work. But that’s your job, I thought.”

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