Spring 2004

Bringing Back the Family Farm with CSAs

by Maura McDermott

A veteran grower and two successful newcomers explored the ups and downs of CSAs before a large crowd during the 23rd annual Horticulture Industries Show (HIS) January 9 at Tulsa Community College.
Kirk Cusick of Salina, Kansas, and James Cooper and Jenny Wenger of Nuyaka, Oklahoma, spoke during the Friday Sustainable Agriculture/Farmers’ Market sessions sponsored by the Kerr Center and the Oklahoma Farmers’ Market Alliance.

Community Supported Agriculture or CSA is an innovative marketing arrangement between a farmer or group of farmers and their customers. Customers become members of a CSA by paying a set amount to the farmer either before the growing season begins or at intervals throughout the season (weekly, monthly). In return they receive bags of farm-fresh food which can include produce, flowers, herbs, even meat, eggs, and value-added products. They also establish a relationship with a farmer and understand where their food comes from and what it takes to grow it.

Usually customers come to the farm or to a drop-off point to pickup their bags. The CSA concept originated in Japan, and then spread to the US where today there are an estimated 1,000 CSA farms, most in the Northeast and the upper Midwest around large cities. CSAs can also be successful in smaller cities, such as Salina, which has a population of about 50,000.

Cooper and Wenger are pioneering the concept in northeastern Oklahoma. After having farmed in Virginia for three years, the young couple moved to a farm near Mazie where they raised vegetables, herbs, and flowers on 6-8 acres as full-time farmers. This will be their third growing season in Oklahoma, selling primarily at the Tulsa Cherry Street Farmers’ Market. They also sell to a couple of restaurants including the Palace Café in Tulsa, as well as to 35 customers in their CSA.

Last year, their CSA customers paid $350 “up front” (before the growing season), said Cooper, for a basic “share”: bags of food delivered weekly for 22 weeks. The bags contain enough produce for “five veggie-based meals for three people,” said Wenger. (They also offered a “robust share” for a higher price.) The bags also incorporated herbs and cut flowers.

Cooper and Wenger identified a number of advantages to the CSA. It provides early income, is a good outlet for surplus produce such as tomatoes, and it operates regardless of the weather (unlike a farmers’ market).

Another advantage: “The farmer sets the rules,” said Cooper. “You have dedicated your life to farming; you should have control.”

The hard-working couple also identified several “cons” to the arrangement. It can be hard to please everybody, though they have had very few complaints. Finding the time to distribute the bags, and a good place to do it have been problems for them. They pointed out that distribution is easier in the eastern US, where everything is closer together, and customers generally come to the farm to get their produce.
In the bag with the produce, they include a newsletter that includes recipes and news about their farm. “Recipes bring in wonderful business,” said Cooper.

The couple has just moved to a new farm near Beggs, and would like to expand their CSA, while keeping their Tulsa farm market business. Cooper’s advice to those considering this kind of business: “Don’t do a CSA until you are comfortable with growing.”

While Cooper and Wenger’s CSA grew rapidly, Cusick started slow, bringing bags of vegetables to work for three co-workers ten years ago. The business grew to fifteen, and then thirty customers. At that point, “I didn’t have the guts to bring thirty bags into the office,” he said, so he began home delivery. He did that for nine years, but now wouldn’t recommend it—”too much time in a vehicle.” He now distributes at the Prairieland Market, a local grocery, where his 70 customers pick up. He also sells produce to a senior citizen center salad bar.

Cusick’s experience is instructive for growers in central and western Oklahoma. He grows enough for seventy customers on five acres of highly alkaline soil in a drought-prone country. (Salina averages 29 inches of rain per year) He practices very little tillage—just tilling “spots to plant,” and he does irrigate, “but painstakingly.” He is able to be successful through drought by maintaining a high level of soil organic matter through incorporating cover crops of hairy vetch/rye and additions of prairie hay and leaves.

Cusick’s customers are health care professionals, teachers, and elderly people who grew up eating food from a garden. He prices items individually, and offers customers a choice of three sizes of weekly bags for $40, $60 or $70 per month. His customers get a monthly statement.

How does he set his prices? “I price as high as I can,” he said smiling. “I charge 25 to 50 cents higher than the grocery store.” And he sticks to his price, charging for example, $2 per pound for tomatoes, no matter the supply.

“Customers pay it, because they trust you, and trust that it is a fair price,” he said.

He advises people getting into CSA to think about processing their leftover produce. He is setting up a certified kitchen to do just that, taking vegetables to “the next freshest stage—freezing.”

This year Cusick attempted to do the CSA year-round. He grew hardy greens in high tunnels, but hopes to be more diversified though the winter in the future. “It’s exciting to think it could be done over a full year,” he says. “But you have to be creative.”

The three agreed that finding customers was not a problem— all have had to turn people away. Word-of-mouth, newspaper or TV coverage, short talks to service clubs, bringing samples to places such as doctors’ offices, and a web site are all ways to attract customers.

In fact, Cusick says that often CSA operators get to a point where they have to decide whether to expand further and make the CSA a full time job, perhaps employing others, or keep it small and “make enough to pay for the farm and have a vacation.”

Cusick is grateful to the people who have been members of his CSA for the past ten years. They epitomize the spirit of the Japanese CSAs, called teikei, which means literally, partnership or cooperation. “They are the reason,” he says, “family farms are coming back.

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