“Community Supported Agriculture”

27 mars 2008

Principle:

CSA are partnership between farmers, who have organic, biodynamic or sustainable systems of production, and consumers. The “supporters” share the production’s costs (seeds, water, equipment, etc) that are expected during the year and the farmer provides them various produces throughout the seasons. This way, the consumers know exactly how is produced their food, while sharing the producer’s risks (as an under-productive year).

The objectives of this mutual commitment are varied. From the one hand, it guarantees the consumers healthy products and a wide diversity of crops. From the other hand, farmers have their incomes assured and can invest without important risks. Moreover, it permits the development of a regional and sustainable agriculture and the dialogue between producers and consumers.

Picture from olharfeliz.typepad.com

History:

The principle of “CSA” was born in Japan during the sixties. A group of women wondered about the quality of the food in the conventional agriculture, afraid by the use of chemicals. Furthermore, they had environnemental concerns. They decided to have a commitment with farmers: they purchased food directly from them, who guaranteed not using chemicals. This system was called “teikei”, that means “food with the farmer’s face on it”. At the same time the “food guilds” were developed in Switzerland.

In 1985, an American farmer, coming back from Switzerland, created the first CSA in the USA. Then, in 2000, a couple of French vegetables producers created the first AMAP (Association pour le Maintien d’une Agriculture paysanne), after they had discovered it in the USA.

Nowadays, teikei has become the Seikatsu Club, with more than 290,000 members (99, 9% of women!) and has extended its activities on the social and political areas. We can count 1500 CSA farms across the USA and Canada and over 750 AMAP in France.