Research & reports

Wellbrock Wanja, Daniela Ludin, Ludwig Lisa N, Kristina Muhlfeld, Wolfgang Gerstlberger · Journal of Applied and Physical Sciences · Global

This paper examines whether Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a solution to the dilemma of farmers needing to operate both economically and sustainably. Through an expert interview and a survey of members, the study identifies problems in the realization of a CSA and provides possible solutions.

Ferne Edwards, Anitra Nelson · · Global

This chapter suggests future research directions in food for degrowth studies, drawing from a collection of case studies and critiques. It offers transdisciplinary theoretical and practical approaches and key research questions, covering topics like household self-provisioning, collective endeavors, networks, and degrowth perspectives on the circular economy and food waste. The chapter proposes research questions related to accessibility, visibility, temporality, spatiality, and various measures.

Glauco Régis Florisbelo, Angelina Moreira Melo, Alair Ferreira de Freitas, Pinheiro, Daniel Calbino · LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) · Brazil

This study analyzed how the implementation of a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in an urban community garden in Sete Lagoas (MG), Brazil, contributed to food and nutritional security for consumers and increased the income of family farmers. Qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews with farmers and questionnaires administered to consumers. The results demonstrated that the CSA strengthened social relations between farmers and consumers, added elements of food and nutritional security, and improved the income of farming families.

Christine Lux, Brianna Routh, Lacy Stephens · Journal of Human Sciences and Extension · United States

This exploratory study surveyed 21 parents from a campus-based preschool in the northwest United States during the 2017-2018 school year to understand the impact of the "Harvest of the Month" program on children's nutrition behavior at home. Findings indicated that a variety of program foods were served and consumed at home, but parents prioritized knowing food origins over serving local foods. Parents' knowledge of farm to ECE, reported farmer's market purchases, and CSA participation were limited, suggesting a need for targeted parent education.

M. Petrie, S. Basu, E. Sayer, R. Bellin, J. O apos Neill, S.A. Berkowitz · UNC Libraries · United States

This study estimated the population-level effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a subsidized community-supported agriculture (CSA) intervention in the United States. A microsimulation model developed in 2019 utilized national demographic, biomedical, and dietary data (NHANES, 2013-2016) and a randomized trial (Massachusetts, 2017-2018). Two interventions were modeled: an unconditional cash transfer ($300/year) and a subsidized CSA ($300/year subsidy), both of which were shown to reduce discounted disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for cardiovascular disease and diabetes complications. Both interventions had negative incremental cost-effectiveness ratios, implying cost savings to society.

Mariarosaria Savarese, Kerry Chamberlain, Guendalina Graffigna · Sustainability · New Zealand

This qualitative study explored how Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms in New Zealand create value for sustainability practices from both farmer and consumer perspectives. The research, conducted using focused ethnography, found that CSA is a complex concept involving active consumer participation in economic, social, and environmental values. These interconnected values foster an ecosystem where sustainable food practices are promoted through a "learning by doing" process.

Zhenzhong Si, Theresa Schumilas, Weiping Chen, Tony Fuller, Steffanie Scott · Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l alimentation · Canada; China

A comparative study of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) models in Canada and China was conducted based on interviews and survey results. The study developed a framework to compare CSAs based on initiators’ motivations, economic characteristics, ecological practices, shareholder relations, and community building. It was found that CSAs in both Canada and China are struggling to maintain the movement’s original values and economic viability, moving away from the traditional ‘risk sharing’ approach to more flexible payment mechanisms. However, other original tenets of the CSA model, such as member engagement, are strengthening.

Lucy Diekmann, Leslie Gray, Chan L. Thai · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · United States (California)

This study measured the social, educational, civic, and nutritional impacts of four types of urban food system activities: home gardens, community gardens, farmers' markets, and CSAs, through a survey of 424 gardeners and 450 direct market shoppers in California's San Francisco Bay Area. While nutritional impacts were consistently high, significant differences were observed in social interaction and civic engagement between activity types. Gardens generally fostered greater learning, connection, and civic participation than direct marketing.

Tezcan Mert-Cakal, Mara Miele · Agriculture and Human Values · United Kingdom (Wales)

This article examines Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) projects in Wales as social innovation, exploring their emergence, innovative role, and transformative potential. Based on qualitative data from four different CSA case studies in Wales, the research showed that Welsh CSA cases play distinctive roles in the social economy, satisfying needs for ecologically sound and ethically produced food and empowering individuals at a micro level. However, the paper argues that for CSA initiatives to become 'workable utopias', they need to overcome barriers preventing replication, participation in macro-level policies, and scaling up, particularly concerning economic sustainability and resilience on a small scale.

Irene Antoni-Komar, Christine Lenz · · Germany

This chapter discusses community building in sustainable food initiatives in Germany. Empirical data was collected through semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and action research with 27 practitioners from local food enterprises and initiatives, while quantitative data was gathered from surveys of members and customers. Findings indicate how participation in transformative enterprises is based on new forms of creative doing and collaboration, along with associated barriers and opportunities.

Betty T Izumi, Allea Martin, Teresa Garvin, Cesar Higgins Tejera, Sylvia Ness, Katy Pranian, Lauren Lubowicki · PubMed · Global

This study evaluated the preliminary effectiveness of "CSA Partnerships for Health," a 23-week grant-subsidized Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, in improving dietary behaviors, self-efficacy to eat vegetables, food security, and overall health among 48 safety-net clinic patients. This single-group pretest-posttest study utilized interviewer-administered surveys. Statistically significant differences between post-intervention and pre-intervention values were observed for several outcomes, including vegetable intake, orange vegetable intake, eating habits, food security, ability to afford healthy meals, and general health status.

Marie Diekmann · Bundesanstalt für Landwirtschaft und Ernährung · Germany

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is an innovative form of direct cooperation where farmers and consumers share costs, products, responsibilities, and risks. A research project conducted in Germany from 2015 to 2018 aimed to contribute to the limited knowledge on CSA as an alternative niche strategy for agricultural businesses. This paper presents the central results of that project.

Silvio Cristiano, Marco Auriemma, P Cacciari, Manola Cervesato, Domenico Maffeo, Paola Malgaretto, Francesco Nordio · · Italy

This case study describes an ongoing community-supported agriculture (CSA) project in the urban-rural sprawl between Venice and Treviso, Italy. Farmers and consumers co-design and co-manage food provisioning and crop planning, sharing risks, avoiding food waste, and addressing financial barriers. The project aims to meet community food requirements while addressing economic, environmental, and social aspects, presenting feasible paths for sustainable transition.

Christina Plank, Robert Häfner, Rike Stotten · Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie · Austria

This paper analyzes Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in Austria, examining its values-based production and consumption within the "third food regime" using an interdisciplinary framework. The study found that CSA is currently a niche in Austria, where solidarity, community attachment, and respect for nature are central ideals for members. However, CSA initiatives face institutional, social, and material challenges in daily practices that require attention for their long-term viability.

Ted White · Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · United States

Non-market sales, barter, trade, donations, and other creative transactions have been integral to Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) since its inception, promoting creativity and new economic thinking due to its advance payment system for unknown harvests. Based on qualitative field research, primarily in the Northeastern United States, this chapter examines the innovative transactions that have enabled CSA and other Community Supported Enterprises (CSEs) to grow. While acknowledging that the 'Community Supported' model has not solved the challenge of providing adequate incomes for producers or attracting diverse participants, the chapter presents evidence of CSA as a vibrant system connecting producers and consumers through creative transactions.

Poppy Nicol, Alice Taherzadeh · Sustainability · United Kingdom (Wales)

This article explores the potential of cooperative working methods to scale out sustainable and just food systems in Wales. Based on interviews with stakeholders in Wales and international case studies, it identifies opportunities and challenges. Findings suggest that cooperative and community-based approaches, including CSA and food hubs, have the potential for sustainable food production and distribution, emphasizing the importance of capacity building and community participation.

Sabine Gruber · Frontiers in Psychology · Global

This study compares two models, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and Airbnb, to illustrate how trust is formed differently in the sharing economy. In CSA, trust is built through personal relationships and face-to-face communication, while Airbnb promotes trust through its system and technological innovations. A conceptual analysis, adopting Niklas Luhmann's distinction between personal and system trust, describes two different modes of trust formation.

Borgar Aamaas, Robbie M. Andrew · Duo Research Archive (University of Oslo) · Global

This report, part of the SHAR(e)ON project, estimates the effects on emissions of four sharing schemes: community supported agriculture, sharing in local communities, sharing of cabins, and car sharing. The estimates are presented as scenarios or illustrations, not as likely outcomes for emissions.

Daniele Eckert Matzembacher, Fábio Bittencourt Meira · Organizações & Sociedade · Brazil

A 2020 case study of the CSA (community supported agriculture) organization "CSA Alfa" in Minas Gerais, Brazil, using Karl Polanyi's theoretical framework. It frames CSA as a movement that repositions agricultural production around fair-trade and agroecological principles through short chains linking production and consumption, and finds that market exchange and reciprocity coexist as different regulatory principles within CSA Alfa. Friendship, tolerance, loyalty, and commitment build a communal ethos around food, and the study argues CSA acts as a counter-movement to commodification by strengthening participants' relative autonomy and raising social cohesion among participating groups.

Jan Hassink, Angela Moriggi, Saverio Senni, Elisabeth Hense, Dries de Moor · · Europe

A 2020 paper uses care ethics as an analytical tool to examine caring, regenerative agricultural and food practices, including community supported agriculture, urban agriculture, care and social farming, and organic and biodynamic farming. Drawing on empirical cases in the Netherlands and Italy guided by social justice, cooperation, respectful relationships, inclusion, and education, it describes how care for the community, vulnerable citizens, the environment, farm animals, and food is practiced. It identifies challenges farmers face around access to land, budgets, and dealing with the conventional system, and poses as an open question the extent to which such caring practices can influence dominant agricultural and food systems.

Anna Pigott · Environment and Planning E Nature and Space · United Kingdom

Drawing on extended fieldwork with a Community Supported Agriculture project in south Wales, this article re-imagines soils as lively, complex, more-than-human ecologies by examining the largely sidestepped subject of spirituality in agriculture. It explores how care is cultivated through biodynamic farming, a non-conventional method incorporating astrological and spiritual principles, arguing that biodynamic narratives and rituals encourage attentiveness to more-than-human agency and energy, to depth both underground and in above-ground influences of air and celestial bodies, and to reciprocity between soil biota and humans — while also resisting drives to measure and map and leaving room for mystery. It also notes that despite biodynamic farming's growing popularity, its spiritual elements tend to be kept quiet, overshadowed by more familiar secular narratives.

Mirosław Struś, Magdalena Kalisiak-Mędelska, Michał Nadolny, Marian Kachniarz, Magdalena Raftowicz-Filipkiewicz · Sustainability · Poland

A survey of 400 agricultural holdings across nine municipalities of the Wrocław district in Poland examined the potential for Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) to develop in the district, given its proximity to the Wrocław market in Lower Silesia. The research found that the CSA model opens opportunities for long-lasting cooperation between farmers and consumers, but that implementing it requires raising the prices farmers charge for their produce by about 50%, along with solutions to problems related to the cost of transporting agricultural products.

Marilyn Sitaker, Jane Kolodinsky, Weiwei Wang, Lisa Chase, Julia Van Soelen Kim, Diane Smith, Hans Estrin, Zoe van Vlaanderen, Lauren Greco · Sustainability · United States

A mixed-methods evaluation examined Farm Fresh Food Box (F3B), a market innovation in which pre-ordered CSA-style produce boxes are sold through rural retail outlets, implemented from 2016 to 2018 in Vermont, Washington and California as part of a USDA-funded multi-state extension and research project. A national market survey found consumers likely to purchase F3B if it offered good value on fresh local produce without requiring a subscription. The model placed additional labor burdens on farmers and retailers and required extra time for relationship-building and record-keeping. Purchasers were generally satisfied with quality, quantity and variety, and a high proportion considered F3B good value for money. As a business innovation it showed only modest profit, though retailers and farmers considered it worthwhile for expanding their customer base, promoting their brand and developing partnerships.

Fatih Özden · Turkish Journal of Bioethics · Turkey

This paper discusses the community supported agriculture (CSA) model in Turkey from the perspective of food ethics. It identifies the adverse effects of synthetic agrochemicals on human and ecosystem health, corporate dominance of the food supply chain, and intellectual property rights as issues on the food ethics agenda.

Kévin Bernard, Aurélie Bonein, Douadia Bougherara · RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · France

A study eliciting inequality aversion and risk preferences among 162 French community-supported agriculture (CSA) consumers through incentivized field experiments. Consumers were found to be concerned about payoff inequalities, showing advantageous inequality aversion toward CSA farmers but also disadvantageous inequality seeking. Consumers were risk averse and loss averse and distorted probabilities. The study observes that inequality aversion and risk preferences in the loss domain may complement each other in ways that strengthen consumer support for CSA farmers.