The Untold History of CSA

The dawn of Community Supported Agriculture in the United States is most commonly attributed to Indian Line CSA (South Egremont, MA) and Temple-Wilton Community Farm (Wilton, NH), both founded in 1986 by European men. While these two farms have played undeniably large roles in the popularization of CSA in America, they are not the first in our country to have thought of the economic model, nor is Europe the first place in the world to have established agricultural memberships.

Booker T. Whatley, a Black author, horticulturist, and professor at Tuskegee University (Tuskegee, AL), identified 10 commandments he considered essential for successful farming in the 1960s and 1970s. Included in these commandments was the concept of a “Clientele Membership Club,” in which club members paid an upfront fee to pick their own produce all season long. This system enabled farmers to pay for necessary seed and equipment at the beginning of the season without taking out a loan; saved growers time and effort required to harvest produce; and granted club members agency in choosing the food they were eating. Now considered two separate farming models that can be used separately or in tandem, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and Pick Your Own (PYO) are foundational to many small- to mid-sized farms, and are only becoming more popular as demand for fresh, local food continues to grow.

At the same time that Booker T. Whatley was conducting research on intensive, small-scale farming in the United States, CSA-like models were being independently established elsewhere in the world. In 1965, a group of Japanese women founded the Teikei system. Emphasizing mutually supportive, producer-consumer relationships, Teikei built off of Japan’s long history of economic cooperatives. It also reflected growing national concern over food safety and chemical contamination in the wake of Minimata Disease (methylmercury poisoning that affected thousands near Minimata Bay, Kumamoto, Japan), and gained additional momentum after the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown of 1986. To this day, farming cooperatives remain very popular in Japan, and the Japan Organic Agricultural Association elevates consumers’ and producers’ shared commitment to elevating safe, healthy food grown in Japan.

Cooperative farm economics began to take hold in Europe in the 1960s as well. Largely inspired by Philosopher Rudolph Steiner’s (1861-1925) teachings on non-chemical agriculture and the “associative approach” to economics, Germans Carl-August Loss and Trauger and Hans Groh established a community land trust, called Gemeinnützige Landbau-Forschungsgesellschaft (LBF), in 1968. Dismantling power imbalances and encouraging equity, LBF proposed a cooperative economic model called “Agriculturally Cooperating Community,” in which non-farming community members granted loans to LBF farmers. This form of financial cooperation ultimately led to membership programs. In Geneva, Switzerland, farmers inspired by collective agriculture in Chile during the Allende Administration (1970-73) founded a producer-consumer alliance called Les Jardins de Cocagne in 1978. By the early 1980s, there were proto-CSA programs developing across Germany and Switzerland.