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CSA shareholders are also motivated by their palates. Thanks to refrigeration trucks and subsidized highways, U.S.-grown produce travels an average of 1,500 miles from farm to plate, 25% farther than in 1980. Picked four to seven days before reaching supermarket shelves, fruits and vegetables lose nutrients and flavor along the way. Worse, the economics of big agribusiness demand fewer, hardier crops, thus driving many varieties to virtual extinction. At Huasna Valley Farm, founded six years ago outside the city of Arroyo Grande, the Skinners grow 38 types of lettuce. They educate the 230 members of their CSA to the pleasures of daikon radishes, tomatillos and pluots--a cross between plums and apricots--by including recipes in their newsletters. "I find myself loving weird things like kohlrabi," says subscriber Eric Dudley.
On a fall Friday, in a tin-roofed shed, Skinner and his wife Jenn helped pack reusable 34-qt. ice chests with corn, edamame, heirloom tomatoes, squash, sunflowers and other goodies--all picked less than 24 hours earlier. Shareholders pay $817 for 40 weeks of home-delivered produce--less if they collect it from a drop site in their town. In spring and winter, the chests may be only two-thirds full. In summer, they brim over. The system varies with each CSA. At the Watershed Organic Farm outside Princeton, N.J., one of the country's largest CSAs, most of the 2,600 shareholders drive to the farm once a week, some from as far away as Manhattan and Philadelphia. For the produce of a shorter--May-to-November--season, they pay $475, about $19 a week for 5 to 40 lbs., depending on the month. That's half what they would pay retail, says Watershed manager Jim Kinsel. But it is twice what he would earn if he sold his produce wholesale.
The drawback to CSAs is that customers must adjust their appetites to the seasons and the vagaries of the harvest. Most CSAs do send out annual surveys asking what they should grow. At Huasna, members voted out Brussels sprouts and okra; at Watershed, they added fingerling potatoes. But the farmers make the final selection, and at the heart of the CSA concept is a take-what-you-get sharing of risk. Without up-front money from subscribers to pay for seed, property taxes and insurance, Huasna's Skinner says he would be overwhelmed with debt. And since he sells all his harvest directly to his shareholders, he avoids supermarkets' grading standards and can grow crops more for flavor than for appearance.