May 2008: New CSA and Organic Buying Groups project
The Soil Association has just begun an exciting new programme to develop CSAs and organic buying groups. We are part of a partnership project on local food and social enterprise, ‘Making Local Food Work’, funded by the Big Lottery Fund. The project will run in England only. The Soil Association is providing practical support to new CSA and organic buying group initiatives and is looking for interested communities and farms to work with.

“The CSA approach is possibly the ultimate in achieving a self-sustaining localised food and farming system. CSA offers an innovative business approach where a food or farm enterprise has members who own ‘shares’ in the harvest and therefore also share in the risk.”

What is community supported agriculture?
Community supported agriculture (CSA) is about reconnecting people with the farm on which their food is grown. There are lots of different ways that CSA can work. Normally, local people will invest in their local farm in some way in return for a share of the harvest. CSA is a partnership between farmers and consumers where the responsibilities and rewards of farming are shared. Fundamental to CSA is an understanding of mutual support between farmers and those who consume their produce. As CSA farms are directly accountable to their consumer members they strive to provide fresh, high-quality food, typically using organic or biodynamic farming methods. CSA members often commit in advance, in cash or kind (working on the farm), to buying their food directly from the CSA farm.

How a CSA farm might be organised
A CSA can work in many different ways. For example, CSA farms may supply their members with vegetables distributed weekly through a box scheme, from a pick up point or collected from the farm.

Once it has been agreed what the farm can produce and what members would like to receive, the farmer develops a crop plan and a budget for the season. This incorporates all the production costs and fair wages for the farmers. The members approve the budget, and calculate the cost of an annual share by dividing the total budget between them.


» Click here for toolkits, case studies and other publications on community supported agriculture and how you can make it happen

» Contacts for more information

For more information on the Making Local Food Work programme see: www.makinglocalfoodwork.co.uk


Funding is available through the Big Lottery's Fund for local food.
Local Food is a £50 million programme that will distribute lottery grants to a variety of food-related projects to help make locally grown food accessible and affordable to local communities. This was developed by a consortium of 15 national environmental organisations. For more information on the grants available see the website:
www.localfoodgrants.org

This website will be updated regularly and developed over the next few weeks so do keep checking it for new information.