CSA

What is CSA?
With increased media attention on obesity and corresponding need for people to lead a healthier lifestyle, more and more consumers are paying closer attention to what they eat. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) provides consumers with an economical option to both increase their intake of fresh, specialty crop foods and support local agriculture. 

NOFA-NY CSA Fairs
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) provides consumers with an economical option to both improve their health and support local agriculture by increasing their intake of specialty crop foods. Most consumers are unfamiliar with the CSA model, and at the same time, CSA specialty-crop farmers have identified educating consumers about the CSA model and marketing shares to consumers as the biggest barriers to expanding the local CSA specialty-crop sector. NOFA-NY will coordinate, publicize, and host 18 CSA promotional fairs over three years in eight regions throughout NYS. These fairs will educate consumers about CSA, connect consumers with their local specialty-crop CSA farms, and increase the direct market sales of specialty crops in eight regions of NYS.

This past March NOFA-NY kicked off the first year of annual farmer to consumer CSA Fairs in three regions of New York. See HERE to view directories of the participating farms, photos, and information about the fairs. 
 

Making CSA Accessible 
NOFA-NY feels strongly as an organization that everyone should have access to fresh, local, nutritious, organic food. Since 2010, we have worked to increase access to organic fruit and vegetables for urban and rural, under-resourced communities across New York State. 

The following are some of they ways in which we are doing this: 

• Neighborhood Farm Share We are excited to begin work on a new project entitled "Neighborhood Farm Share"! It is a project that aims to bring affordable organic food into under-resourced communities through the use of Community Supported Agriculture. HERE for more information on this project.
   
• Farmers: How to Accept Food Stamps Printable Fact Sheet
  A fact sheet for farmers on the process of accepting food stamps at their farm stand, u-pick, farmers' market and CSA. 

CSA as a Strategy for Food Access/ Food Justice
As low-income, inner city neighborhoods are left with out easy access to supermarkets and healthy food, CSA is an affordable option for increasing availability of quality produce in a way that supports local farmers.

• During the last 35 years, many supermarket chains have left low-income inner city neighborhoods and moved to the suburbs. As a result, many communities are left with fewer stores, mostly smaller, higher priced retail outlets containing poor quality produce and only limited selections of fresh foods. 

• The poor access to large supermarkets in low-income communities means that folks living in these communities are paying more for their food since the small markets charge an average of 8% more when there are no large supermarkets nearby. 

• Approximately 75 cents of every $1 you spend on food in a supermarket actually covers the costs of advertising, processing, packaging, storage and long-distance transportation. With CSA, on the other hand, there are no middle people, so members' money is spent on actual food and supports local farmers.

• Unlike vegetables in grocery stores that have traveled long distances to get to your plate, the spring and summer produce members get through CSA have usually been picked the same day they are delivered to your neighborhood! Your fresher CSA vegetables are healthier for you since they have a higher vitamin and mineral content. 

• Through CSA an economically diverse group of members can participate and receive the nutritious produce everyone needs. 

• If we lose our farmers and farms, we will have less control over the quality and safety of our food, less say in how it is produced, by whom and under what kind of working conditions, and less say about who has access to it.

• For each regional farm that CSA members help to sustain, they support on-farm employment, up to seven additional farm-related businesses, and the potential to create small-scale processing, trucking and other jobs. These are jobs rooted in the community that circulate their dollars in the local economy.