Does community-supported agriculture support conservation?

Excerpt

As the “grow local/eat local” movement continues to gain momentum and visibility, conservationists may wonder about its relationship with natural resource conservation and the environment.

Growing local encompasses a broad range of traditional and innovative farm-to-consumer models, including farm stands, farmers' markets, community gardening, co-ops, We b marketing, and community-supported agriculture farms (CSAs).

The CSA concept was pioneered in Japan and Europe in the 1960s. CSAs were introduced into the United States in the mid-1980s and spread across the country with the encouragement of enthusiastic farmers and advocates such as Robyn Van En.

The CSA concept, sometimes called “subscription farming,” involves a community of individuals becoming members of a farm and sharing the risks and benefits of food production with the farmers. CSA members pay for membership and sometimes visit their farm to perform work, tour the fields, or meet with other members in educational and social events. By receiving shares of what is being produced locally, members become in touch with what is harvested in which part of the growing season and how factors such as temperature and precipitation affect production.

Several nationwide surveys in the last decade …