Grower Perspectives in Community Supported Agriculture

Urban Farm DB summary

A study using case study interviews to identify community-supported agriculture (CSA) growers' perspectives in the United States, focusing on their information sources and motivations. Like most organic growers, but unlike most conventional growers, few CSA growers had a family background in agriculture; common information sources and strong informal communication were observed among CSA growers, whose primary sources were other growers, printed material, and conferences, while conventional agricultural information sources such as the cooperative extension system and formal agricultural education were underutilised and ranked lowest in importance. CSA growers were motivated by multiple goals - marketing, education, community, and environment - with marketing the most frequently cited primary goal, followed by consumer education; for many CSA growers, the marketing motive was not purely monetary but also philosophical, pursued as a vehicle for achieving "right livelihood" and building an associative economy that redefines society's relationship to food and land.