Features

Is Organic Too Easy? Know Yr Farmer.

By: Anna Stevenson

Late October of last year I was in a hoop house at Garden of Eve Farm, knee deep in nightshade vegetables. “All of these need to go,” said Chris Wallbrecht. “Pick all the peppers and eggplants, even the small ones, and then pull up the plants. We’ll dump the compost in the chicken coop.”

A dozen of my fellow cityslickers and I had driven two hours out of New York City to the very end of Long Island to pick pumpkins and help out for an afternoon on Chris’s farm, which had grown the vegetables we’d been eating all season in our Community-Supported Agriculture project, or CSA.

The hoop house we were standing in, a simple construction of clear plastic stretched over rows of metal hoops that helps to extend the growing season, was about 20-feet wide and 80-feet long. It took about an hour to pick the eggplants and peppers, which came in many more shapes and sizes than usually found in stores, and clear all the remaining plants so Chris could put in a winter crop of spinach and lettuce greens.

It felt good to be in the country, to sing a little, to have an excuse to wear a flannel plaid shirt.

Chris was astonished by how quickly we got the job done. “That would have taken me days,” he said. What was a fun bit of agritourism for us was a huge help for him and his tiny, two-person five-acre farm.

He took us on a tractor ride of the property and we picked out pumpkins before heading home.

Living in New York, I had the chance to be involved with several different Community-Supported Agricultural projects. It has changed my perspective on community organizing, capitalism and food production – not to mention the kinds of food that I eat.

Coming home to Vancouver, I thought surely there would be CSAs here too. But while there are indeed many organizations doing good things related to food and farming – from farmer’s markets to urban gardening – CSA is barely on the table.

What is CSA?

Community-supported agriculture recognizes that every purchase of food involves not only vegetables and dollars, but also land, people, and relationships. In a CSA, members pre-pay for a share of a farm’s produce for an entire season and receive a weekly delivery of a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, often picked the same day. This money gives the farmer income at the beginning of the growing season to pay for such things as seed and repairs.

It also provides financial security for the farmer. Selling at a farmer’s market is capricious, subject to the whims of consumers and the weather. There’s no guarantee the tomatoes harvested that morning won’t have to be brought home again unsold.

In contrast to a market, where consumers have control over how much and what to buy, being part of a CSA means you take what you get – that is, what the farmer is growing at any given time. If there is a bumper crop of spinach, members leave with armfuls of it, and their weekly newsletter will likely be full of recipes for what to do with the abundance. If there is drought and the snap peas fail, members don’t get snap peas.

What they do get, however, is increased awareness of seasons, weather, the volatility of farming, and the great pleasure of fresh, local food – as well as the chance to try new things. My CSA introduced me to a ton of greens I’d never used before, including mizuna, Tokyo bekana, medicine greens and lacinata (or dinosaur) kale, and many more.

Although individual CSAs vary, members typically pay $400 to $500 per season, generally June to November. This works out to about $20/week, for which members receive seven to 10 kinds of vegetables per week- enough to feed two to three people. Some CSAs offer fruit, flowers, meat, eggs and dairy products as well.

The CSA movement began in the 1980s and has grown in popularity since. Many regions have organizations to promote CSAs and match farmers and city groups. Since 1995, a Quebec organization called Equiterre has helped to set up CSAs with 90 farms that provide organic food to more than 7,500 families all over the province. In New York City, Just Food has helped to set up more than 50 CSAs since 1994. Even an organization in Vancouver, Washington, VancouverFood.org, offers eight different CSAs.

Where in Vancouver?

So what’s up in this city? Vancouver’s Farm Folk City Folk, an organization that works on issues related to local, sustainable food systems, lists three CSAs in the GVRD on its website. But for a city that’s so into sustainable agriculture and so closely surrounded by farmland, I was surprised to find so few options.

Part of the challenge seems to be the delivery-box schemes that are so popular here, and the general boom in the idea of “organic” as a catch-all phrase for “good.” Already an alternative to regular shopping at a grocery store, box programs such as Small Potatoes Urban Delivery (SPUD), and Organics@Home have gotten consumers used to the idea of organic but not the idea of local, or seasonally available. Both programs will source local ingredients when possible, but also offer a complete array of organic tropical fruit, and non-local foods when they’re not in season locally.

David Catzel, a farmer at Fraser Common Farm who is starting a small CSA this year, said box systems and the idea of organic offer consumers an incomplete picture, inadvertently leaving CSAs by the wayside. “There are so many box schemes in Vancouver that offer organic food. People are really concerned about their own health, they think organic is healthier. However, they don’t give any thought to whether flying in organic pineapple is good for the environment.”

Indeed, in terms of gas miles, protecting local farmland, biodiversity and another endangered species, buying locally or joining a CSA are a lot friendlier on the environment than shipping in organic mangoes from Chile.

CSA v. Organic

In addition to the chance to have a relationship with the person who grows your food, CSA is a different kind of economic model.

There are no middlemen and little packaging or processing, save a few twist-ties. You’re paying to preserve farmland, and quite often you’re paying for organic or IPM cultivation techniques (integrated pest management, a low-chemical model of farming), which might have smaller yields and be more labor and cost intensive, but keep the water and air around your farms and the animals that live there (including humans) healthy and safe.

So why aren’t farmers in Vancouver leaping on the CSA haywagon? It seems that part of the answer is economics. Paul Healey, a farmer at Hanna Brook Farm in Maple Ridge who is starting a CSA, is only offering 10 shares this year instead of his entire business. “It’s just not worth it financially,” he said. “I can make way more money selling to wholesalers.” However, he did say he was eager to connect with people interested in becoming part of his farming community.

David Catzel is also starting a small CSA this summer, which he feels he could grow to 80 members in the next few years. This year alone he’s had over 200 inquiries to join his CSA, but he wants to make sure he can grow enough to cover standing orders with restaurants, as well as CSA members, before expanding.

A wholesaler won’t come out to your farm and help you harvest eggplants or raise funds to buy a crib for your new baby. CSA members do both. That’s part of what “supported” means. And when you know the person growing your food, you care about it and what you’re eating.

Supermarkets offer the illusion of abundance and food security, but agriculture is precarious, and being part of a CSA can help remind you that food grows in the ground, and that it’s possible to create the kind of world and community you want to live-and eat-in, one CSA at a time.

CSAs that deliver to the GVRD

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