Organic. Non-GMO. Grass-fed. These are a few of the dozens of terms coined in the last few decades to describe a push toward healthier food. And in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro area, there are now dozens of farms with an up-and-coming partnership to bring fresh food right to your door.

Community Supported Agriculture, CSA for short, is a system in which community members register with a local farm to buy harvest shares in advance. You invest in that farm, purchasing shares based on the season and what is available.

There are multiple local farms with this system in place—many delivering both to the Chapel Hill and Carrboro Farmer’s Markets and to members’ homes. Typically, deliveries are every week.

How Different CSAs Work to Serve Their Members

John Soehner of Eco Farm in Chapel Hill said that CSAs are “good for very organized and good farmers.” Eco Farm offers a small CSA, with only two people in it thus far. The farm, however, has been producing over seventy different types of vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers, and sells them at local farmer’s markets.

Brinkley Farms, based in Creedmoor and serving the Durham and Carrboro Farmer’s Markets, offers a CSA that allows members to choose what goes in their weekly box based on what the farm has in season, whereas other CSAs have a set menu of what goes into the boxes each season, like Anathoth Community Gardens and Farms.

Located in Cedar Grove, Anathoth’s CSA is weekly, and boxes are comprised of the best harvest of what they have each week.

“We try to include as many people as possible and have it be as open to as many people as possible, which means people come from all different backgrounds and cooking experiences and familiarities with different foods,” said Julia Sendor, one of the two year-round, full-time staff members at Anathoth, who said that their CSA works to build and support the local community. “It can be a challenge but I think it it’s also really exciting to try to put together a box that ideally everyone will be really excited about, and think about across the board what will make people excited. And we include recipes with every box, and suggestions for a meal plan for the week, especially for things that people might be less familiar with- like okra or eggplant- to help them, ideally, to love those items, too.”

CSAs as Nonprofits

Anathoth works as a CSA like Brinkley and Eco Farm in a lot of ways, having members pay their share. However, they also offer a sliding scale so that anyone can participate. As part of a non-profit effort, they allow families to pay only what they can afford, even if that means nothing.

In addition, members can donate a full or half-share, and contributions go to health centers and several local churches, including Orange United Methodist and Binkley Baptist Church in Chapel Hill. Members at Anathoth can also refer someone to receive a donated share.

A group of community members comes together on one of Anathoth's community work days. Rainbow not promised, but fresh food included. Photo via anathothgarden.org

A group of community members comes together on one of Anathoth’s community work days. Fresh food promised, rainbow not (typically) included. Photo via anathothgarden.org

“I do think that the CSA is really special because it’s based on relationships,” Sendor said. “One trend I do see in our world today is this emphasis on storytelling and relationships. There’s so many choices people could make—buy this or buy that, go to this store or go to that store—and I think that we’re realizing the importance of having relationships and stories being told and that connects people and gives them that incentive to keep going with something. Some people find that at farmer’s markets, but I think the power of the CSA is in those relationships. People feel like they have this commitment to a farm, and the farm has a commitment to them. They read in the newsletter stories about the farm; we have community work days twice a week during the main growing season where people can come out, meet each other, work together and share in a potluck meal. Just based on what I’m seeing in all kinds of business fields, non-profits, education and in the media, I do think there’s this move towards wanting real stories about real things, real people and real places and a CSA is so ideal for that.”

To expand upon those relationships, and bridge community gaps, Sendor said that they encourage community members to come out and visit during community work days, which are every Tuesday through the end of July from 5 p.m.-7 p.m., with a potluck at 7 p.m., and every Saturday through October from 9 a.m.- 1 p.m., with a potluck at 1 p.m. With healthy food becoming pricier, and still only a small percentage of people buying produce locally, Sendor said that Anathoth’s workdays are a great way for people to come together to learn about the benefits of having access to the healthiest food straight from the ground.

But Anathoth isn’t the only farm taking the non-profit model into account. Transplanting Traditions is a community farm located off Jones Ferry Road in Chapel Hill that takes a unique approach to CSAs, hiring refugees and immigrants as farmers. It is a non-profit, educational farm that, according to its website, “seeks to address the challenges of food insecurity, healthy food access and economic well being inequity in the refugee and immigrant community.”

There are 31 refugee families currently farming at Transplanting Traditions—all of them former farmers in their native country of Burma.

People that buy shares at Transplanting Traditions are given local produce. And because of the farmers’ experience, members are also given Asian vegetables that are traditionally grown in Burma. Also, members are paired up with a specific refugee farmer. Part of the member’s payment goes to their farmer and farmer’s family as they acclimate to a new language, culture and environment and learn to run a farming business here in the U.S.

And from a business standpoint, Sendor said that CSA is a bit like insurance.

“Crop insurance is more ideal for a really larger-scale industrial farm, but in some sense the CSA is insurance because in any given year we may not have the biggest bumper crop of green beans, but we might have something great of else but as long as we fulfill their trust that we’re giving them the best that we have and it’s all going to be a good season in the end, we don’t have to wring our hands quite so much. If one thing isn’t what we hoped, we can give them plenty of whatever other crop is our bumper crop. So I think in an economic sense, too, a CSA does makes a lot of sense if both the participants, the customers and the farmers feel like it’s a good relationship of trust and commitment…there’s been a lot of discussion of how good, fresh food can be affordable…I do think a CSA is really well-set up towards opening up doors for more access especially because of that sense of connection between the participants, a sense of ‘we’re all in this together.’”