Community Supported Agriculture is a system in which consumers receive food directly from the farmers who produce it. But unlike a farmers' market system, supporters of community agriculture actually share in part of the farmers' risk. That is, they pay in advance for a portion of the farmer's total crop. Crops that do well will be abundant in the share, crops that do less well will be less abundant. For their part, the farmers have a stable income that doesn't depend on sunny weather on farmer's market days.

Why would anyone support CSA farmers when they could just as easily go to the supermarket or pick what they wanted from a farmers market stand?

CSA members receive their produce at prices that are slightly cheaper than the farmers market.

CSA member's food is typically produced via sustainable methods. Unlike typical monocrop production systems, CSA member's fruits and vegetables are produced as part of a large cropping system which relies on crop rotations and other natural methods to break weed and pest cycles. While CSA members might like mizuna lettuce in their shares each week, they accept that a variety of greens and crops are necessary to help their farmer maintain a cropping system that does not rely on pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. They know that the maintenance of this system is essential to their having favorites like mizuna lettuce for years to come.

These types of systems help protect our water supplies from pesticides and silt, and don't contribute to pollution resulting from transporting food cross-country.

CSA supporters have a say in not only in how their food is produced with regard to the environment, but with regard to society. They can mandate that farmworkers earn fair wages and have good working conditions. Too much organic produce in our country is produced by farmworkers who earn substandard wages. Paying nonliving wages to workers ultimately hurts the surrounding community. For example, workers who cannot afford preventative health care often are treated in emergency rooms which cannot turn patients away for inability to pay. This results in higher health care costs for everyone.

Because their food is produced nearby, CSA members' food also may be more nutritious as it does not have to be picked "green" for long-distance shipping.

Finally, producing food locally results in a greater percentage of dollars remaining in the local economy. What's more buying food directly from the farmers who produce it ultimately reduces the need for federal farm subsidy programs which have encouraged resource exploitation and concentrated land ownership.