Sharing the Harvest: A Citizen's Guide to Community Supported Agriculture, 2nd Edition

by Elizabeth Henderson, Robyn Van En, Joan Dye Gussow (Foreword by)

Overview

To an increasing number of American families the CSA (community supported agriculture) is the answer to the globalization of our food supply. The premise is simple: create a partnership between local farmers and nearby consumers, who become members or subscribers in support of the farm. In exchange for paying in advance--at the beginning of the growing season, when the farm needs financing--CSA members receive the freshest, healthiest produce throughout the season and keep money, jobs, and farms in their own community.

In this thoroughly revised and expanded edition of a Chelsea Green classic, authors Henderson and Van En provide new insight into making CSA not only a viable economic model, but the right choice for food lovers and farmers alike. Thinking and buying local is quickly moving from a novel idea to a mainstream activity. The groundbreaking first edition helped spark a movement and, with this revised edition, Sharing the Harvest is poised to lead the way toward a revitalized agriculture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781603580755
Publisher:	Chelsea Green Publishing
Publication date:	11/01/2007
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Elizabeth Henderson co-authored The Real Dirt and Sharing the Harvest: A Citizen's Guide to Community Supported Agriculture. She farms in Newark, New York, and has been involved in CSA farming for more than 15 years.

Robyn Van En (1949-1997) was the founder of Indian Line Farm, the first CSA in the United States, and author of the path-breaking handbook Basic Formula to Create Community Supported Agriculture (1988, 1996).

Joan Gussow is a highly acclaimed nutrition educator who has demonstrated that year-round eating from 1,000 square feet in a suburban riverfront village is possible, life-sustaining, and delicious. She is the author of This Organic Life, The Feeding Web, and Growing, Older: A Chronicle of Death, Life, and Vegetables, and is Mary Swartz Rose Professor Emerita and former chair of the Columbia University Teachers College Nutrition Department. She lives on the Hudson River in Piermont, New York.

Table of Contents

1. What is Community Supported Agriculture?
2. CSA and the global supermarket
3. Creating a CSA
4. Choosing a farm or farmer
5. The land
6. Nurturing a solid core group
7. Labor
8. Sharers on the farm
9. Money matters for CSAs
10. Legalities
11. To certify or not to certify?
12. Community and communications
13. Growing the food
14. Handling the harvest
15. Distributing the harvest
16. The weekly share
17. Combining CSA with other markets
18. Regional networking for farm-based development economics
19. Multifarm CSAs
20. Matching biodiversity with social diversity
21. Agriculture supported communities
22. CSA around the world
23. CSAs that quit