Showing posts with label local harvest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label local harvest. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Eco-Stepping with Community Supported Agriculture

"Hello, yeah, it's been a while.  Not much, how about you?" 

Okay, so now that you're in a '70's kind of mood, let's talk about Community Supported Agriculture or CSAs.  Community Supported What?

According to Wikipedia, community-supported agriculture (in Canada Community Shared Agriculture) (CSA) is a socio-economic model of agriculture and food distribution. A CSA consists of a community of individuals who pledge support to a farming operation where the growers and consumers share the risks and benefits of food production. CSAs usually consist of a system of weekly delivery or pick-up of vegetables and fruit, in a vegetable box scheme, and sometimes includes dairy products and meat.

Still feeling the 70's or even the 60's?  Maybe even a little hippie-ish?  Let's press on with a little history. 
Community-supported agriculture began in the early 1960s in Germany, Switzerland and Japan as a response to concerns about food safety and the urbanization of agricultural land.  That may sound like long, long ago and far, far away, but recent news has indicated otherwise.