Eat Local

We’ve subscribed to CSA farms for almost ten years now — first in Madison, WI, and later in St. Paul, MN. When we moved to Cincinnati last year, we were a bit late for a CSA share (May), and frankly, too busy to do much more than cursory research (which revealed … not much).

This year, we resolved … what’s that you say? What’s a CSA, you ask? Oh, right, a little background. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. I’m not sure of the origin of the term, or where it got started, but it essentially works like this: non-farmers (like us) buy a share of a regional farm’s seasonal output; by paying up front, early in the season, they help the farmer(s) pay for the sowing and tending and reaping of the crops, and in return, the non-farmers (like us) get a weekly share of the bounty.

It can seem like an expensive proposition at first (share costs vary widely, depending on a number of factors, including the number of weeks, weekly volume, and how much or how little the farm transports the goods), but when you’re opening the fifteenth share in late August and munching on fresh sweet corn that was picked THIS MORNING, that money you spent in April seems like a mere pittance. And crunching the numbers can reveal that you’re not paying that much more (if at all) than you would for fresh, healthy organic produce at the market.

There are other benefits, as well:

• Participating farms tend to be organic, or even “beyond organic” (exceeding FDA standards for organic production and emphasizing sustainability) eliminating pesticides and genetic modifications from the equation.
• They’re local, which cuts down on the carbon footprint of getting food to your door — even if you have to pick up at your farm, you’re using less fuel than if you go to your neighborhood grocery for produce from California and Chile. Many CSAs offer convenient pick-up locations somewhere between their farm and the population they serve, and a few even deliver to your door (our last CSA in St. Paul delivered our goods every week in an old ambulance that had been converted to running on vegetable oil — they called it the veggie-bulance, and you knew it was nearby when you smelled warm french fries in the air).
• They encourage you to eat seasonally — you know, asparagus in the spring, when it grows, corn in late summer, and so on. This may not seem like such a big deal, but when you eat locally grown foods in season, they taste so much better than most of the out-of-season produce we can get so easily at our supermarkets.
• They support local agriculture — personally, I feel better about giving my produce dollars to an Amish family in Hillsboro (like we are this year) than to a farm conglomerate subsidiary of a megacorporation in California; in addition, I like the idea that as CSAs proliferate and generate enthusiasm, more and more farmers will convert to a more sustainable model, and more and more consumers will benefit. Sort of an idealistic critical mass, if you will.

Anyway, this year we resolved to get on the job of finding a local CSA earlier, and were pleased to find several options. This is a great resource for finding area CSAs; use the radio buttons on the upper right to select CSA, whether you want to subscribe online, then enter your zip code, and presto, you have a list of farms in your area offering CSA shares.

Before I fall off my hobby horse, I wanted to point out a local blogging resource that I found the other day. It’s called Cincinnati Locavore (I know, I know, I’m late to the show — City Beat even named it one of the best local blogs for 2008), it’s run by valeree, and there you’ll find a wide range of topics on local food production, distribution, and consumption. valeree offers an extensive list of resources, including local food sources and restaurants emphasizing local foods, Cincinnati food blogs, and links to further reading.

*edited to add* Thanks to Victoria for a link to a definition and brief history of CSAs.