User:Amwong95/sandbox

Introduction
Community-supported agriculture, commonly referred to as a CSA model, is a system that connects the producer and consumers within the food system more closely by allowing the consumer to subscribe to a the harvest of a certain farm (or group of farms). It is an alternative, socioeconomic model of agriculture and food distribution that allows the producer and consumer to share the risks of farming. The model is a subcategory of civic agriculture that has an over arching goal of strengthening a sense of community through local markets.

In return for subscribing to a harvest subscribers receive either a weekly or bi-weekly box of produce (or other farm goods). This includes in-season fruits and vegetables and can expand to dried goods, eggs, milk, meat, etc. Typically, farmers try to caress a relationship with it's subscribers by sending weekly letters of what is happening on the farm, inviting them for harvest, or holding an open-farm event.

Socio-economic model
CSAs rely on the social process incurred by creating a direct connection between the producer and consumer through alternative markets. The CSA model takes this connection one step further, by having the members and farmers both incur the risk of farming. The goals of the first CSA model in the US were to have the producer and consumer to come into the market as equals and make an exchange with fair prices and fair wages. The viability of this market and the growing attention surrounding it is seen in the growing number of farms switching over to a CSA model.

This kind of market holds ‘economic rents’ where the consumer surplus comes from the consumers’ willingness to pay for something further than the product as well as for the products inputs themselves. The consumer is paying for things such as transparency, environmental stewardship, producer relationships, etc. The farmers engaged in CSAs do so to fulfill goals other than income and are not compensated fairly in these exchanges. Although these markets still exist within a larger capitalist economy, they are able to exist because of the ‘economic rents’ that are collected.

"The Moral Economy is a Double-edged Sword" by Ryan E. Galt

Microeconomic degrowth: The case of Community Supported Agriculture by Marjolijn Bloemmen and Roxana Bobulescu