If you have kept up with the local food movement over the past two decades, the term CSA has probably been something you have come in contact with. CSA is an acronym for Community Supported Agriculture, the concept of which can be interpreted in a number of ways. At its core, a CSA is a model in which the customer financially invests in a farm at the beginning of a growing season, when sales are at their lowest, and in return receives a share of the farm’s harvest once crops are coming out of the fields. Vegetable farms often use CSAs as a business model that helps pay for the upfront costs of getting crops into the ground – seeds, compost, time and labor spent of growing and maintaining crops, water and energy costs, etc.
