FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Local farmers see drop in CSA Sales
Contact: Lorien MacAuley, PhD, Agriculture and Sustainability Specialist, Montgomery County Food Council
(703) 789-7748, [email protected]
Local farmers see drop in CSA Sales
The economic downturn has had big impacts for small, diversified farms that sell directly to customers.
This past weekend, Farmer Marc Grossman of The Farm At Our House sent out a question to a popular Montgomery County farmer listserv to ask, “has anyone else seen a drop in their CSA sales this year?” He immediately got a deluge of responses from other area farmers, as they have also seen a downturn. They expressed serious concern for the survival of their farms this Spring. “We have three CSA pick-up locations, and numbers are down at each one. And this comes after what I believe was the best product we’ve ever put out, last year!” says Grossman.
Customers may be turning elsewhere, often for packaged, convenience items. “They are turning to Door Dash, Uber Eats, the prepared-foods aisle at the grocery store, and the many, many microwavable packaged foods, from green beans to carrots to lasagna to pizza. They may not realize it, but their health suffers from this.” says Tom Farquhar of Sandy Springs Gardens. “From my vantage point, this has been the hardest season recruiting members in the last 15 years of doing CSA,” says Mike Protas of One Acre Farm.
Farmers have tried new approaches to appeal to CSA customers in response to the downturn. Farmers reported offering trial CSA boxes for new customers, home delivery, or different prices and durations for the CSA memberships. As Laurie Savage of Savage Acres points out, “we have even offered free delivery to their homes, but I think this hasn’t taken off.”
In a CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture, a customer buys a share in the farm at the beginning of the season. In practice, the share feels much like a subscription, where every week, the customer receives a box with a hearty selection of farm fresh products available that week. Often, farms offer different types of memberships and even partner with other neighboring farms to provide products they don’t carry – like local meats, cheeses or honey will be brought into a farm that grows primarily fruits and vegetables. CSAs provide an important influx of funds at the season’s beginning, when the farmer most needs it to purchase supplies.
CSA sales increased dramatically during the pandemic, according to the CSA Ideas Lab, a national organization that follows CSA trends. As Farquhar points out, “with the pandemic fading into the rear-view mirror, people are going out to eat… which doesn’t include sitting down to a dinner that they fixed from scratch, and CSA food is food that starts at scratch!” Farms built up their CSA operations during the pandemic when more people were cooking at home, and now farms are having to quickly pivot, after planting and preparations for the season have already begun.
For some farms, if they don’t find enough customers, they could go out of business. Protas, who has seen many other farms fail in his 15 years of farming in Montgomery County, states “plenty of farms come and go in this region and, if we are going to make a long term impact on growing food in this county, I think we need to have a better understanding of what is working and what isn’t.” Small and mid-sized farms already operate on tiny profit margins. Many beloved farms are actually deep in debt, rather than making a profit. Some of the farms may not be able to weather the financial strain from the sudden drop off in CSA sales.
CSAs are operated by small or mid-sized farms that grow a wide range of products, and most of these farms are organic and sustainable farms, with a greater diversity of farm owners, also. These are the farms that use sustainability best practices such as crop rotation, intercropping, conservation tillage, and cover crops, rather than relying on synthetic chemical sprays that can enter the watershed. Thus, buying a CSA share is also an investment in preserving a greener, cooler climate, and a healthy and equitable food system. CSA food is also “fresher, more nutritious, better tasting, more environmentally-sustainable local healthy food option,” according to Farquhar.
We hope you might give a CSA share a try! For more information and to peruse local CSAs, please visit these listings:
- MoCo Food Council MoCo Made CSA list
- Montgomery County Office of Agriculture’s CSA list
Please contact Lorien E. MacAuley, PhD, Agricultural and Sustainability Specialist, at Montgomery County Food Council, [email protected], with any questions.