CSA = Community Supported Agriculture. You buy a share in a farm, or pay a monthly fee, and receive a weekly basket of whatever is ripe in the farm that week. check Community Supported Agriculture - LocalHarvest
A farmers’ market is a marketplace where local farmers have stands where they sell their produce. Check Farmers' Markets - LocalHarvest
For starters, I’m taking it for granted that eating locally is better than eating food that is grown in faraway places for health (fresher, riper), environmental (transportation), and economic (free trade problems) reasons, and do not intend to debate these issues here.
What I’d like to see debated is which is better overall (for the customer, the farmer, and the word): CSAs or farmers’ markets?
Here are some arguments I can think of:
A. The customer:
At the farmers’ market, you get to choose your own produce, while from the CSA farm you will get whatever is in season that week, which means you might miss out on some produce if the season is bad, and you might get a lot of pumpkin in the fall but not much else.
In terms of health benefits, both the farmers’ market and the CSA farm offer freshly picked produce. However, farmers’ markets are not regulated, and some vendors might be buying produce from large vendors rather than getting it locally.
B. The farmer:
With the CSA you’re supporting one farmer by participating in the risks, costs, and products of the farm in such a way that the farmer does not have to shut down if there is a bad season. However, with the farmers’ market, you’re supporting several small farmers, though not to such a magnitude that it allows them to survive very bad seasons.
C. The world:
Both CSAs and farmers markets support local small farmers and helps develop agriculture in the region. This in turn reduces the need to buy food that is grown in faraway places, which would reduce monopoly of large farms and also reduce green house emissions from transportation. CSAs seem to lend a greater support to local agriculture because they prevent small farms from dying.
For a farmers’ market that opens several times a week, you have as many as 40-50 vendors driving their trucks or vans from agricultural areas, as well as customers driving their cars to get the the farmers market (since it seems to me very few people bike or walk). This is quite a bit of gas used. With the CSA, you either drive to the farm to get your produce, or the farm delivers the produce to your door, in either case using less gas.
These arguments seem to me to lean heavily towards CSAs rather than farmers’ markets. What do you have to say about these arguments? And are there arguments I overlooked that would tip the scale the other way?
If you are seriously talking local produce, the season will be the same whether it is a single supplier or a group of suppliers. The only way to eliminate the bounds of the seasons is to import from areas where the seasons differ from yours.
40 or 50 trucks driving 20 miles to town and 2,000 families driving from one to five miles to market vs 2,000 families each driving 20 miles to the farms does not strike me as a slam dunk improvement.
What I meant but did not express very well is something like the following example:
Your CSA might have a bad crop of tomatoes this year, which means you will only get very few tomatoes. However, other farms had better crops, so if you shop at the farmers’ market you will be able to buy tomatoes from another vendor if one has a bad crop.
Ideally, each family would support the farm closest to them, which should be within 10 miles if not closer. Also, what about the case where the farmer delivers the produce to the customer? They make one big trip a week, rather than 2,000* families making one round trip each?
*I don’t know if it’s possible to have a CSA that supports 2,00 families. This might require several farms. But I could be mistaken.
This isn’t even close. The Confederate States of America beat the farmer’s market to within an inch of their life, a-whoopin and a-hollerin the whole while. Just not a fair fight, and not even good for entertainment value. Now, stack them up against, oh, I dunno, mebbe a bunch of damnyankees or something, and you’re like to get a few epic battles out of the affair.
Farmers Market. I get to choose my own produce (no 50 pound bags of turnips or whatever), I know it’s local and most of the vendors are organic, etc. I suppose YMMV as far as farmers markets go, but I know my nearest one is awesome; it’s less than 2 miles from my house. In fact, I’m going over there in a half an hour…
My collective gives me yummy apples every week. Seriously, once you get into the hang of it, there’s a general collection you can assume that will be there… apples, lettuce, potatos… and then some odd things that show up. Squashes of various types, pumpkins around halloween, etcetera.
Really, it winds up working pretty much the same as the farmer’s market. I like to think of the individual results as a pleasant surprise and variation in my diet I might not normally eat.
Er… how many people do you think really live within 10 miles of a working multicrop vegetable farm? Case that possibly be true of any urban center? In NYC, there are plenty of CSAs, but I doubt any drop off point within the city limits is within 60 miles of its farm.
Even if the farm is more than 60 miles away, if the distribution center is withing 10 miles, then a CSA is still better than a farmers market. This is because with the CSA you have one delivery truck traveling 60 miles with x families traveling 10 miles, while with the farmers market you have something like 50 trucks traveling 60 miles with x families traveling 10 miles.
I love the idea of CSA, but most of the ones I’ve seen listed in the paper required lump sum payment for the season. That can amount to a chunk of change that maybe I don’t have all at once, unfortunately. At a Farmer’s Market, I can go when I have money and be able to select what produce I like. I would support the CSA, but I’d have to plan for it well in advance.
In California farmers markets are not regulated by the government , but there is a California Federation of Certified Farmers’ Markets which ensures that all produce is California grown.
I’m not aware of any CSAs near me, but there are 3 farmers; markets withing five miles each weekend, and we go frequently. As a gardener, if the CSA produced squash or tomatoes, it would be useless to me, since I have a surplus. Plus, we get to select based on quality and price at the farmers market.
From my own perspective, Farmer’s Markets are a better deal. CSAs are nice in that I know the farming practices of ‘my’ farm, but if they grow a lot of zucchini, I’m stuck with it. At the farmer’s market, I just pass up the zucchini. Wasted food also has an environmental impact.
I’m not sure what the transportation difference is between farmers driving to the farmers market so people can pick up their food, and farmers driving to the CSA drop point (which around here is often - surprise! - the farmers market) so people can pick up their food.
Like Drain Bead, our CSAs often have booths at the Farmers Markets.
I joined a CSA a little over a month ago. I am definitely at the whim of whatever they give me, but the fact that I’m eating what’s in season is rather compelling. I’m figuring it’s “greener” than shipping all those things from chile, right?
The CSA option I’ve chosen is an every-other-week delivery. I can go through a box every week, but boy did I have to work hard at it. This way, on the off weeks, I can go to the farmers’ market and enjoy all the food porn, and pick what I want.
So in other words, I say the answer is YES. There is room for both! I still get to eat mostly what’s in season, I get to support a specific local farm, but I also get to help other local farmers to a lesser extent, and get my freedom of choice. I don’t think it’s an either-or proposition.
Are you all sure of the origin of the stuff being sold at your local farmer’s market? The one here in Minneapolis will often be carrying items, especially fruit and plants, that is clearly labeled as coming in from other parts of the US.
I don’t know if the same rules apply here, but I saw a sign at one booth yesterday at my local market that said the tropical fruit for sale at that location was not locally grown. So yes, definitely a good point that depending on the rules in play, not everything at the market is locally grown. Not everything there is organic either. In fact, some of the smaller farms specifically do NOT go organic, because it’s rather costly to get the certification.
[QUOTE=Dangerosa]
From my own perspective, Farmer’s Markets are a better deal. CSAs are nice in that I know the farming practices of ‘my’ farm, but if they grow a lot of zucchini, I’m stuck with it. [\QUOTE]
Well you can always freeze/can it for winter. It takes not time and saves you from buying zucchini that is grown elsewhere during winter.
I’m jealous. Those of us who live in the desert don’t have much fresh produce choices.
Whenever I hear people urging others to ‘eat local’ I think, “They obviously don’t live in Tucson!” Here if I ate local dinner every night would be cactus pads and fried javalina.
Then there are those of us who are SOL no matter which we prefer. The nearest farmer’s market is 30 miles away, up the mountain, and the nearest CSA is close to 50 miles away. I’m stuck with the local stands.
