Rebekah Kim
It Takes A Community
csa: yea or nay?
PrintThe modern day American supermarket conjures images of fluorescent lights illuminating wilted iceberg lettuce and identical rows of plasticized cheeses and gelatinized lunchmeats. But in recent years, food activists and concerned eaters have been working to change this picture.
An alternative method of purchasing food called Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) attempts to reconnect consumers to local produce. On Columbia’s campus and in New York City, CSA programs have sprouted at a remarkable pace, providing students and residents with a source of fresh local produce every week. Still, the question of whether CSAs have helped to change the way Americans look at food remains unanswered.
Participants in CSA programs pledge support to a farm operation in the hope that, according to the US Department of Agriculture, “the farmland becomes, either legally or spiritually, the community’s farm.” These individuals agree to pay an upfront fee, buying a share in the farm’s produce for a set period. In return, shareholders receive fresh fruits and vegetables from their particular farm over the course of the growing season. Participants must assume the risk that farmers will face a poor harvest, which would mean receiving less than their money’s worth or an excess of one product. Although an unlikely possibility, when faced with a glut of eggplants or rutabagas a participant might quickly regret joining the program.
Multiple CSAs operate within New York City. Paula Lukats, program manager of one CSA in NYC, claims that this season alone there were 80 CSA distributions. “That’s 80 drop off points [in the city] that farmers are bringing shares of their harvests,” she says.
Lukats describes the recent “increase in understanding and knowledge and interest in CSAs,” noting that they have started 20 new sites in the past season. Paying the $400-600 fee guarantees food that city dwellers can feel good about eating, even if their pocketbooks suffer.
As she explains, CSA has a number of benefits. The system gives consumers a way to know “where their food’s coming from, to have a connection to the person who’s growing the food so that they can ask questions,” Lukats says. “It certainly gives them access to incredibly fresh high quality local produce that’s grown organically. [CSA] gives people a sense of community within their neighborhood.” CSA also gives financial security to farmers upstate. “They receive money up front before the beginning of their season. In the past farmers would have to borrow money and hope to repay that from their income,” says Lukats.
On Columbia’s campus, the Columbia University Food Sustainability Project (FSP) connects students to the Morningside Heights CSA. Columbia also has its own CSA, which allows students to work with Roxbury Farm in Kinderhook, New York. Barnard senior Megan McNally, former president of the Morningside Heights CSA, clarifies that the Columbia CSA “has full season shares available to the residents of the community,” unlike Morningside‘s program.
The very presence of CSA options in the “Columbia bubble” begs an exploration of the strong student response to “responsible eating.” Why do so many students opt for local food, especially considering the relative expense of participating in a CSA versus more conventional shopping outlets?
Jake Lasser, a Columbia sophomore, says that he participates in FSP because he enjoys cooking with the produce delivered every week. “Last week we got kale, bok choy, carrots, and celery. It presents interesting cooking challenges because I never know quite what I’m going to get until I pick it up,” he says. In addition, Lasser likes “to know exactly where [his] vegetables are coming from.”
CSAs may also attract participants because they promote a sense of community among members and, more broadly, between campus and upstate New York. Columbia students rarely take Metro North upstate, and living on an urban campus for four years deprives many of any link to a more natural world. Vicariously escaping from the Columbia gates via the taste of an unnaturally luscious beet or a mellow, sweet pumpkin allows students to feel closer to the world outside of Manhattan. Such a sensuous experience displaces some of the guilt associated with living among concrete behemoths rather than trees.
A desire for enhanced connections between the university, local economies, and a national movement spurs already activism-minded students to leap onto the CSA bandwagon. Subtle undertones of self-righteous hippy-ism permeate CSA, from the indiscriminate usage of terms like “sustainable” and “community” to the movement’s vaguely utopian vision. At a university infamous for fostering zealous protests and dedicated (read: crazed) activists, a lack of CSA programs would seem shocking.
But despite student enthusiasm for the program, it is clear that CSA programs will not replace the agri-industrial farm complex any time soon. Zealots of the responsible eating community understandably misrepresent the public’s latent interest in their movement; even though heightened media attention to local agriculture and celebrity authors like Michael Pollan have increased awareness among certain typically wealthy demographics, much of mainstream America remains either unconvinced or ignorant. Within Columbia’s ivory tower, elitist intellectuals clearly understand the theoretical basis behind CSA, but in middle America, CSA only exists as an ambiguous acronym. Simultaneously, switching industrial farming to a more socially and environmentally conscious system is virtually impossible on a large scale.
Ultimately, like so many student activist ventures, CSA can be best described as quixotic. While many Columbia students make the individual decision to eat responsibly, the faceless mass of less financially fortunate and less-informed Americans continues to peruse the supermarket produce section. Even those students in CSA programs ought to critically examine their motives: are they participating to feel better about what they eat or to feel better about themselves? While a chorus of voices cries out for sustainable eating, sustainable consumption, and sustainable agriculture, the haunting melody beneath whispers of sustainable guilt.
23 October 2009
vol. 7, issue 6
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