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ABOUT COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AGRICULTURE (CSA) Community Supported Agriculture is a way to support small scale, local farmers. Farm members, or "partners", buy a share of the produce before the season begins, which provides the farmer with much-needed income upfront to pay for seeds and basic expenses. Partners then receive a basket (share) of produce each week throughout the growing season, benefiting from the fresh-picked quality and diverse variety of crops grown. CSA farms first came about in Japan, Germany, and Switzerland in the 1960s, in response to concerns about food safety and the urbanization of agricultural land. In Europe, groups of consumers and farmers organized themselves into co-operative partnerships in order to fund farming operations. In Japan, it was mothers concerned about the rise of imported food and the loss of arable land who started the first projects in 1965. The concept of CSA spread to North America in the 1980s, and there are now over 1500 CSA farms in Canada and the United States. Joining a CSA can be an exciting way to learn about where your food comes from and how it is grown. You will likely experience new kinds of vegetables, and learn new ways to cook and preserve them. If you like, you can visit the farm to help out with the production, or to see how your vegetables are growing! Meeting the people who grow your food is a special part of joining a CSA farm. You get to know the farmers who are putting lots of love and hard work into producing your food. You will meet them at the pick-up location, on farm visit days, and have regular contact through a weekly newsletter. While industrial farms select their crops for their ability to ship over long distances, organic community-supported farms can choose varieties for their flavour and nutrition, which means that you can expect the food you get from your CSA farm to be of much higher quality then what you are used to at the grocery store. This Wikipedia article has more good information about the CSA movement.
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