Encyclopedia > Community supported agriculture

  Article Content

Community supported agriculture

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is the practice of farming with a greater than usual degree of involvement of consumers and other stakeholders.

The idea behind CSA is for each participant to contribute equal amounts of labor and capital, and in return receive an equal share of the production, with management by consensus. CSAs grew out of subscription farming[?] and the food cooperative movement of the 1970s. Many CSAs avoid use of pesticides and inorganic fertilizers. There are a disproportionate number of vegetarians among CSA members.

Most real-world CSAs have a few designated people who provide the labor and management, hired help, or both. Some sell excess goods to nonmembers. Vegetables are the most common crop, with fruit occasionally grown.

There is no documented case of the CSA model being applied to meat production. However, related movements like Slow Food have been involved in both meat and dairy production.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Shinnecock Hills, New York

... to 44, 20.5% from 45 to 64, and 14.1% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 28 years. For every 100 females there are 82.8 males. For every 100 females age ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 31.1 ms