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A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Community-supported agriculture supports local farmers with upfront payments for produce deliveries. Consumer expectations for convenience and choice ask more of those farmers. Here's Harvest Public Media's Hope Kirwan.
HOPE KIRWAN, BYLINE: Patty Grimmer ticks off the trays of seedlings in one of the greenhouses on her farm in southern Wisconsin.
PATTY GRIMMER: Yeah. So we got peppers. We've got some lettuce mix that's going to be transported out our field, our tomatoes.
KIRWAN: All of this produce will go to regional farmers markets, restaurants and customers who signed up for a community-supported agriculture, or CSA, share. In most CSAs, members pay several hundred dollars at the start of the year and receive a weekly box of produce throughout the spring and summer. But Grimmer lets her members sign up for shorter time frames, as little as one month. And they can opt to pay as they go instead of all at once. Some old-school farmers may say that's not CSA. But Grimmer sees it as a needed evolution to the original model.
GRIMMER: We're transitioning to a generation of convenience, of preference. You know, you can get your groceries delivered to you in a matter of hours while you sit on your couch and pick what you want to pick.
KIRWAN: She's a part of a growing number of CSA farmers who are offering more flexibility to their members to keep up with consumer preferences. Sadie Willis is with FairShare CSA Coalition, which serves farms throughout the Midwest. She says producers who are offering more flexibility still see themselves as supported by their community of customers.
SADIE WILLIS: Even if those customers are saying, hey, I want to pick up my box at my local brewery instead of having to drive over to your farm to get it. Or I don't like kohlrabi - can you give me more spinach instead? So, like, some of those components have come into play over time where consumers are being a little bit more choosy.
KIRWAN: She says farms can use a number of online platforms to let CSA members swap out items in their weekly box. Producers can also shift to a credit system where customers load an online card at the start of the season and choose whether to buy something each week. But these customer conveniences move the model away from what it was meant to do for farms. John Hendrickson is a farm viability specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Back in the early '90s, he helped organize some of the first CSA memberships at farms in the Madison area. Hendrickson says, traditionally, CSA was about people taking on the risk with farmers, but that doesn't work for every consumer.
JOHN HENDRICKSON: You know, if the farm had a bad year and there were not as many tomatoes, then people got less tomatoes. You know, most consumers are not in a position to roll the dice in terms of their food budget. And so that has really kind of fallen by the wayside.
KIRWAN: He says CSA has always required more customer service than selling in bulk or at a market stand. Letting consumers customize their weekly box could create even more administrative work for a farmer who would rather be in their field. It's why some farmers, like Liz Graznak in central Missouri, are taking a more conservative approach to customer flexibility. She lets her members pay in installments instead of upfront, but they don't have the option of canceling midseason. Customers can tweak their weekly box when the farm has an abundance of a certain vegetable. But Graznak says she's not interested in becoming a subscription service.
LIZ GRAZNAK: That does not fit what CSA is. You know, for me, CSA embodies eating seasonally, supporting the farm that is feeding you. And I'm not Amazon (laughter), you know?
KIRWAN: She thinks farmers have to find the right balance between serving new kinds of customers and staying true to the whole point of community-supported farming.
For NPR News, I'm Hope Kirwan in southern Wisconsin.
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