Ingredients of Transition: Community Supported Farms, Bakeries and Breweries

Getting LOCAL FOOD INITIATIVES (3.10) and some of the PRACTICAL MANIFESTATIONS (3.9) that your initiative wants to do off the ground can be tricky without financial support, and without a clear commitment of support on behalf of the community. Innovative models for FINANCING YOUR WORK (3.3) and weaving in an element of SOCIAL ENTERPRISE/ENTREPRENEURSHIP (5.2) can make a big difference to projects getting off the ground and being viable.(We are collecting and discussing these Transition ingredients on Transition Network’s website to keep all comments in one place. Please leave feedback and comments, suggestions for alternative pictures, anecdotes, stories and projects for this ingredient here).

The Challenge

Connections have largely broken down between farmers and the communities that, historically, they would have sustained. This enables communities to feel that there is no apparent connection between themselves and the land around them. Farmers are left feeling isolated, irrelevant, and end up increasingly producing for distant anonymous consumers, in a model that increases oil dependency, carbon emissions and lowers the quality of food.

Core Text

The concept of Community Supported Agriculture emerged in the US in the 1980s, and more recently has begun to be picked up in the UK, where there are now over 100 such schemes. In essence, they are farms where members of the local community become involved in the running of the farm through buying shares or becoming members, making decisions and even helping out with the growing and harvesting of the food they eat. For farmers it is a great model because it ensures a secure market for what they produce, and also allows them to feel a sense of being supported by those around them. For the consumer it provides access to food, the opportunity to learn new growing skills, and the opportunity to have a say in where your food comes from. It is also an excellent and key tool in building local food resilience.

According to Tamzin Pinkerton in ‘Local Food: how to make it happen in your community’, there are 4 key principles to community supported agriculture:

Shared Risk: the risk attached to food production is shared between farmers and consumers, meaning that rather than the farmer’s income being subject to the vagaries of the climate and of the market, it is based on trust with those around him/he.

Transparency: this sense of trust leads to increased transparency in how the farm is organised, with members offered the opportunity to be very involved in the running of the farm. Also the levels of trust mean that as people can see how the farm is produced, some CSAs don’t feel the need for expensive organic certification, as anyone can see how they are growing the food.

Community Benefits: such schemes tend to have greater and wider economic benefits to the community. Through farmers being able to keep their overheads low they are often able to make food available cheaper than supermarkets, which helps also to address issues around access to affordable, good quality foods for those on lower income.

Building resilience: CSA schemes have the potential to support and promote community food resilience, putting in place sustainable local food production designed from the outset for the benefit of the local economy.