Resources
- Cultivating Co-operatives toolkit - organisational structures for local food enterprises [PDF, 5.3 MB]
- Planning Toolkit
Planning Matters: Community Groups’ guide to planning issues when a community group needs to consider planning consent and how to go about it [PDF 793KB]
- Legal Tenure Toolkit
Finding Land to Grow Food: Community groups’ guide to legal issues - key issues to consider before you buy, lease, or otherwise gain access to land [PDF 751KB]
- Access Toolkit
Removing the Barriers: Community Groups’ Guide to Making your Growing Project Accessible to All [PDF 675KB]
- Food Coops Toolkit Sustain, our partner in the Making Local Food Work programme, has published a toolkit to help more communities set up their own food co-ops and buying groups.
- Social Business Toolbox
A toolbox packed with tools produced by the Making Local Food Work partners to help you develop your project including marketing, top tips for selling local, legal structures, business planning, the difference between social and community enterprise.
- Community Farm Land Trust toolkit
A free toolkit and case studies from Stroud Commonwealth.
- NEW! A Healthy Profit: A simple guide to pricing the food you make or grow
The aim of the report is to give community food organisations the confidence and the knowledge to construct and use their own pricing model. Report contents: •What is price? •Price and your organisation •Price, your Unique Selling Point and your competition •Price and your customers •Speaking to your customers •Key costs and the importance of reviewing them •Gifts:Who is getting the benefits? •Calculating break-even points •Conclusion
Crop Planning tools
The Soil Association has developed a basic vegetable planner using Excel to help you with initial planning for crop and business planning. For more information about the cropping tool, please contact: Ben Raskin 0117 314 5185 E: braskin@soilassociation.org
Crop Planning Tools
Rotations
Examples
Other resources
- CSA slideshow A Soil Association PowerPoint presentation for you to use to promote the concept of CSA at gatherings and public meetings that you organise [1.2 MB]
- Pig ignorant? A Soil Association guide to small scale pig keeping, 2nd edition, by Jim Pettipher
- CSA Feasibility study 2001. This study explores the potential of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) for farm diversification and community development.
- Marketing for CSAs. Rob Greenland from Social Business Consulting ran 2 excellent workshops on marketing for CSAs in Sheffield and Devon. For those that missed it, this link is to his presentation.
Evaluating CSA
New! The Impact of Community Supported Agriculture
A new evaluation report published in December 2011 which found that more than 80 CSA initiatives are providing multiple benefits to thousands of members, their communities, local economies and the environment.
Research analysis of seven trading CSA projects 2009
This offers an analysis of seven trading CSA enterprises exploring the particular as well as the generic factors which influence the development of CSA in the UK. The circumstances of each enterprise were set against a series of attributes which were considered as characteristic of CSA.
Books
- Sharing the Harvest - an inspirational and extremely comprehensive book on CSA - known as the CSA bible. A must read!
- Farms of Tomorrow Revisited - This inspirational blueprint for CSA is set to guide this rapidly growing movement to the next stage in its development. Filled with practical examples and information for growers and shareholders alike.
- The Boxing Clever Cookbook - This cookbook is different. The first of its kind in the UK, it is more than a recipe book, it is a manual for the cook of the house. It is written for subscribers of vegetable box schemes, those who love or grow their own vegetables, have an allotment, or subscribe to a CSA scheme.
Further Reading
In Your Area - Soil Association Directory
For information on how to add the details of your CSA project to this on-line resource follow the link below:
