This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 8, 2013 - It’s a chilly Wednesday afternoon, but Angie Meara is coming away with a fine haul. Grasping a bag with fresh bacon, pasta, eggs and turnip greens, she’s feeling good about what’s for dinner. There’s even a package of sunflower shoots.
“These are so yummy,” said the 42-year-old Skinker-DeBaliviere resident. “They are like candy for my kids.”
And they are not available just anywhere. But here at Fair Shares, it’s not just the food that’s original. This is no ordinary grocery store. It’s an example of community-supported agriculture (CSA), an approach that is changing the way some people obtain food in St. Louis and one that is growing in popularity around the nation.
“I can make a very big impact with many local farmers, producers and suppliers by coming to one place,” said Meara, a mother of two small children. “I know that they will source it mostly in alignment with how I’d like my food to come to our table. I feel confident choosing just about anything here.”
Will subscribe for food
CSAs are essentially subscription services for produce, meats and other usually edible products. By paying a regular fee, consumers can purchase a “share,” which entitles them either to pick up or have delivered a supply of food from a farmer or group of farmers, typically on a weekly basis. Most CSAs operate seasonally although the biggest, like Fair Shares, source from enough different providers that they can be open 46 weeks out of the year.
The idea is multifaceted. For starters, it allows customers like Meara to feel they are supporting local farms as opposed to produce that comes from hundreds or thousands of miles away. CSAs don’t necessarily prohibit genetically modified crops or require organic produce. The movement has a degree of overlap with patrons and producers who adhere to the “slow food” movement, which stresses the localism, sustainable practices and ecologically natural processes often found by purveyors of goods at farmers' markets.
But the economic model is a bit different. Shareholders in a CSA aren’t just buying an apple or a tomato. They’re often buying a percentage of the crop. And in most CSAs, particularly smaller, single-farm operations, if the yield grows or shrinks, so does the consumer’s shopping bag. In most cases, shoppers own not only a share of bounty but a portion of the risk and the reward.
“What you get usually depends on what the farm is producing,” said Margot McMillen, a Callaway County farmer.
McMillen used to do her own CSA and may do one again, but these days she’s content to sell wheatberry flour to other CSA operations. Instead, most of her business is with restaurants. She said the economics of the movement work well for farmers, who typically have a set number of shares to sell. Whether they sell out or not, they at least know how many customers to plan for and since buyers assume part of the risk, it normalizes the farmer’s income to a degree.
“It’s so much a week and you know you are going to get that money,” she said.
She said consumers love the personal connection as well and the movement is growing.
But some smaller CSAs do come with a caveat. A dry spell or heat wave can wipe out plantings and if one field does particularly well, customers may end up with a bumper crop of a single item.
“One consumer told me that she got really tired of kale,” said McMillen, recalling a woman she knew who subscribed to a CSA that had a strong harvest of the leafy cabbage.
But McMillen said producers try hard to get a good mix of items. She recalled a farmer who felt just as bad when she was producing too little diversity.
“She just got to feeling so guilty when she couldn’t send out a big box of stuff that was full of variety,” she said. “That was the hardest thing for her and I think a lot of people would have the same story. You feel like you’ve let your people down if you can’t provide a bunch of stuff.”
Variations on a theme
Variety is not a problem for Fair Shares, which, at over 300 members, sources from as many as 80 producers.
“We’re not farmers,” said Sara Hale, president. “We’re organizing farmers.”
The selection ranges far beyond produce and meat to include cheese, yogurt, pasta and many other items. There’s even coffee and chocolate, which can’t be grown locally but do come from area roasters. Food is not guaranteed to be organic, but a great deal of it is. Consumers must take perishable produce as part of their share but can trade on other items based on what’s available.
“We create full menus,” said Hale. “It might be a pasta week or a Mexican week or a breakfast share with bacon or breakfast sausage and include eggs, potatoes, mushrooms and pancakes.”
Some entrepreneurs have linked the idea of grocery shopping with a CSA. On the city’s south side, Maude Bauschard runs Maude’s Market, a cozy shop of less than 600 square feet on Virginia Avenue that combines storefront retail with the CSA concept.
Lunching on fruit among shelves full of everything from moisturizing cream to maple syrup, Bauschard said that Maude’s is unusual in that it sells CSA subscriptions but also takes walk-in customers off the street.
“Everything is locally produced except for the citrus that I’m eating right now,” she said.
Bauschard noted that the CSA concept has existed since the 1970s but has more recently come into its own. She said it exploded in recent years but seems to have leveled off a bit.
“For the customers, it is a great thing because they are pretty much guaranteed to get some sort of crop or product,” she said of Maude’s combined CSA dynamic. “We had a major drought last summer and it was hard across the board. But I was able to find various products that did survive. At the same time, the customer is able to support multiple small family farms.”
Maude’s CSA offers a weekly supply of produce, meat, a staple and a “treat.” There are also pork-free, gluten-free and vegetarian options available.
She said CSAs help to boost demand for local crops so that land isn’t used to produce corn or soybeans for animal food or fuel.
Carmelita Nunez, a Maude’s subscriber since the former moved to Dutchtown two years ago, said she thinks the food is better when it hasn’t been artificially ripened or bred for size.
“When things aren’t treated to grow larger, they taste different,” said the 38-year-old. “If something gets too big, it loses its flavor and gets kind of mealy. When things are allowed to just grow as they naturally would, the taste is more condensed and sweeter.”
‘Come and eat with us’
Some farms sell to multiple CSAs, like McMillen. Todd Geisert of Geisert Farms near Washington, Mo., sends pork and produce out to several such outfits, which account for about 5 to 10 percent of his business.
He said people like the feeling of buying local.
“It’s growing,” said Geisert. “There are a lot of farmers trying to get it up and going. It takes a lot of coordination.”
Ramona Prouhet, has run Shared Bounty, a Lincoln County CSA, with her husband Jim for three years. She said she encourages people to look into a CSA’s inner workings before buying in.
“If I were a shareholder, I’d do a lot of homework,” said Prouhet, who invites individuals out to look at the farm personally. “I’d want to know what’s going on. I’d want to go visit that farm, ask a lot of questions and see what they are growing.”
She said Shared Bounty, which offers both full and half shares, produces most of its own selection, except for fruit and even offers delivery to patrons, something not all CSAs do. They hope to sell 40 shares this year.
Prouhet notes a degree of community at Shared Bounty as well. She even hosts a get-together for shareholders at the end of the season.
“I make a meal for them to come and eat with us and I like to get to know them,” she said.
At La Vista CSA, a six-acre nonprofit in Godfrey, Ill., management offers a lower shareholder rate for those who elect to come out and actually work on the farm for three hours a month.
Crystal Stevens, assistant farmer for the enterprise, which usually has about 130-135 members, said that if the full 150 shares aren’t sold, the excess is sold to restaurants or donated to the local crisis food center.
She said that farmers' markets have their advantages but a CSA can open up new culinary worlds for consumers.
“It is exciting and keeps it fresh for CSA members because they get to try new things they wouldn’t ordinarily pick out at the market,” she said.
La Vista isn’t the only nonprofit CSA in the area. In Spanish Lake, tiny Seeds of Hope Farm, a residential operation run by the Community Action Agency of St. Louis County, looks to provide a higher social calling with a subscription. Shares produce about $20 worth of food but cost $28 so that shares for low-income families can be subsidized with an $8 discount.
The farm, at just over half an acre, supports about 25 members. Gabriel Hahn, a representative from Seeds of Hope, said the neighborhood is in a food desert.
“That’s another big part of our program,” he said, “to truly make it accessible for people who don’t have transportation.”
Carl Poettker of Cock and Bull Farms said that he’s been participating in CSAs since last year and is now considering starting one.
“We work with a core group of producers here on the Illinois side where we know them,” said the Highland, Ill., farmer who produces both chicken and eggs for CSA customers. “We know their operation. We know the quality of their product and we’re thinking about putting together something where it may not just be my chicken. It may be my buddy’s pork or our neighbor’s yogurt or another neighbor’s naturally grown produce.”
He said CSAs account for about 15-25 percent of his business.
“Not only does that give us another outlet to reach more customers. It’s providing a little bit of value to the community,” he said. “We’re real proud of our birds. People come back and say, ‘Wow, this tastes like the chicken my grandpa used to raise or my mom used to cook on Sundays.’”