A Brief History of Community Supported Agriculture in North America

By Sarah Imboden

The first modern-day models of Community Sponsored Agriculture (CSA) appeared in Japan and Chile in the 1970s. However, it was notions of community-based agriculture from Europe that influenced the earliest CSA farms in the United States. Based upon Austrian educator and philosopher Rudolf Steiner’s (1861–1925) concept of “biodynamic agriculture, US farmers were able to glean and implement such concepts as:

• New forms of cooperation, in which a network of human relations replaces old systems of employers and employees as well as the practice of pledging material security (land, buildings, etc.) to banks.
• New forms of economy, in which the guiding question is not How do we increase profits? but rather What are the actual needs of the land and of the people involved in this enterprise?

In 1985, an American who had lived in Europe and become familiar with the cooperative agriculture movement in Switzerland found a community interested in establishing a CSA project in Massachusetts. Together, they began Indian Line Farm. That same year, a German immigrant began working with interested locals to begin Temple–Wilton Community Farm in New Hampshire. As they exchanged ideas with one another, each independent farm began to practice Steiner’s basic philosophy and the CSA movement in North America was born.

Just five years later, one study found at least 60 CSA farms in the U.S. Today, there are well over 1,300 CSA farms in North America. How can we account for the speed of this growth? Farmers and community leaders across North America were becoming increasingly concerned about the shrinking percentage of domestic food growers and the lack of relationship between consumers and producers. Young people, especially from the cities, desired to work on such projects in order to encourage local food economies and become more in touch with farming.

Social justice also played a significant role in CSA development in North America from the beginning. Indian Line Farm employed a group of developmentally disabled adults in the first years of its farm. Temple–Wilton Farm continues to use a sliding scale of financial support that takes into account each family’s needs and income. Several sources also attribute CSA growth in Europe and America to the desire to provide healthy food for people living in urban areas who could not afford good nutrition, while simultaneously supporting the livelihoods of farmers.

In fact, although CSA started as a rural movement, urban farms are becoming more and more common as farmers strive to meet the need for fresh food and healthy communities in our cities. In both contexts, today’s CSA farmers experiment with new ways to maximize land use through container gardens, creative irrigation systems, and more. But the core values of CSA farms remain largely the same: to enrich local economies, and create sustainable networks of human relationships.

Sources:
Rodale Institute
Robyn Van En Center
National Sustainable Agriculture Service

Sarah Imboden lives in Catskill, N.Y., with her husband, Jonathan. She enjoys working one day a week at their local CSA to clear her mind as she finishes an MA/MA in public policy and history this summer. Sarah penned “Eat, weed, and be merry,” the Vibes article about her experiences with CSAs, in the summer 2009 issue of In Part.