To CSA or Not to CSA: Weighing the Pros and Cons for Your Farm!
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- čas přidán 12. 05. 2016
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To CSA or Not to CSA? That is the question! Join Curtis Stone as he talks about the pros and cons of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) for your farm in this informative video. Discover the benefits and challenges of this unique model of farming and learn how it can impact your business and community. Watch now and find out if CSA is the right fit for your farm's future!
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About Curtis Stone:
Curtis is one of the world’s most highly sought-after small farming educators. His book, The Urban Farmer, offers a new way to think about farming𑁋 one where quality of life and profitability coexist. Today, Curtis spends most of his time building his 40-acre off-grid homestead in British Columbia. He leverages his relationships with other experts to bring diverse content into the homes of gardeners and aspiring small farmers from around the world. Learn more at FromTheField.TV.
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One thing that I love about my csa versus my store and restaurant sales is that since your in a direct customer relationship. When you have a inclement weather event as I did last summer with 200 inches of rain due to El Nino and I had one week where I really was too thin to have a harvest. When I did my weekly email to explain that the CSA would have to wait till next week. Everyone understood and most offered to have their weekly fee of $25 forfeited even though they wouldn't get any veggies. If you have a supportive community it can make the job more fulfilling and gives some flexibility. I have never participated in the farmers market since as a stay at home dad my time was too limited to man a stand all day. The CSA allows me to make focus on production and there is no time spent trying to sell it since it's already sold. Also most CSA people don't mind the unusual shaped veggies that restaurants may not want or slightly imperfect veggies and they are more than happy to accept. Plus it's good to be diverse and have different revenue streams.
I also clicked on this to find out what a csa was also lol, I'm digesting every video you have in preparation for starting to transition to full time farmer. I've been a small scale backyard vegetable gardener nearly my whole life, being parents always had a garden. After seeing one of your videos totally by chance the 75K on. 1/3 acre you have inspired me Curtis! I've decided to make my favorite hobby a full time career!
About to do the same thing. How did you get on? I'm curious to hear how the last 5 years have been.
you are so knowlegeable. I love your channel. I just grow for myself and 2 neighbors, more or less a micro csa (with no money involved, it's just hobby) and i still pick up valuable tips from you all the time! Thank you so much for that! It's actually very challenging to provide for people consistently. I'm trying very hard but i'm not pulling it off. I can't even do it 6 months out of the year but it's a good challenge for sure. Having a large, varied hobby garden, including all the low value crops, means i'm just dealing with gluts all the time. No rhyme or reason to anything at all, although i'm trying to streamline it now! I just plant as big a variety as possible. That greatly impacts consistent production, of course. I'm a variavore. Haha! It just makes me happy and i really do need the cheap/healthy food. My esteem is growing by the day for people like you. Who knows, maybe one day i might take the plunge. For now, i'll consider it practice and watch guys like you, teaching me. Have a beautiful day tomorrow, Curtis. Bless your good heart for making these videos available to us. Many good things do come to people like you. Just watch.
What a beautiful comment. You just inspired me to grow more variety next year to share with neighbors and friends.
LOL less than a minute in and you mention the book that brought me here. I've been trying to figure out how I could incorporate my community garden with my non profit. This is absolutely the route we're going to go.
just fyi - i clicked on this video specifically so i could find out what a csa is
Same
@@suburbanyute340 thanks for the tip
Super helpful! You have been the best source of information for our small farm.
I was starting to shake and have chills running up and down my spine, finally I got my fix for the day :-D
While I'm just a hobby gardener who aspires to provide local produce to my neighbors and family...
I find that potatoes are one of my favorite things to grow and I can do it in quite a low effort way with no hilling. I think with my no hilling method that I could just use more space to up production. It might take more space than other people have or can use in their context but I have the blessing of belonging to a family with plenty of land and space to grow on. There is no way that I'd be able to compete with a specialized potato farm but I love potatoes, and unless they get in the way of being able to be profitable and make a living gardening someday, I'd like to grow them for others as well.
Anyways. I put potatoes in early in the year, before the garden centers in my area get them even, in the 3 years i've been growing them I've never had any issues with them coming up too early or rotting. I only put them in about 4 to 6 inches deep. Then I cover them in a nice layer of grass clippings. Once the potatoes begin to emerge I throw some straw over them, and they punch through that with ease. I never have to weed the bed due to the mulch and shading effects of the plants. 2 rows to one of my 33-36 inch wide beds. Before the weeds have a chance to find their way through the mulch, I have harvested the potatoes with just a bit of forking here. Since they are shallow, and have not been hilled, I can harvest the majority of them with my hands without having to touch a fork or a spade.
Also considering how well the potatoes keep overwinter in the garage... I don't think it would take much monetary input, considering my available resources, to put together a proper root seller. My wild imagination sees me potentially selling a bag of potatoes to a neighbor in the middle of the winter?
I have no idea how I can get from just being an enthusiastic hobby gardener to someone who is able to profit, and even someday make a living off my families land.
For those in the US be aware that in at least some states if you grow it ourself there is no business license required and you don't have to collect sales tax. Not the case if you buy and resale. Something to check on if you are thinking about it.
Very solid advice. Makes absolute sense.
Very well explained. Thanks!
I just checked out a csa for my city yesterday and was debating on joining up as a beginner. Good ideas there for me to work on. Thanks Curtis.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
Community Supported Agriculture, got it , something I'd done before lol and didn't even know it. Some areas, Boise, Idaho, where I'm from for example there called a community garden or neighborhood garden.
Ty B, glad you posted....I hope to move to Idaho in 1-2 years, thanks for the knowledge.
Absoluted clear and good explanation. Thank you
I totally agree with you Curtis, although you can customize your own CSA to provide mainly greens and baby roots. I run a 10 member CSA right now and all my shareholders are cool with lots of greens each week. I will include summer squash, tomatoes, peppers, beets, carrots, radishes, bunching onions, herbs, cucumbers and a few other items. Im only selling shares to buy a few extra tools and finish up my walk in cooler build. I would say if you're starting off it's very useful to sell a few shares to get some early cashflow. I sell shares that are 10$ a week. Raised 1000 bucks and it wont be tough packing 10 small shares a week :) Thanks for all the content man. Keep em coming!!
this is how i plan to get started also. to get some skin in the game and raise some money for future endeavors.
Good advice. For me as a new farmer, the big advantage of a CSA is having a guaranteed income. Of course specializing and selling to restaurants is a great long term goal, but we all have to start somewhere.
Yes, but we don't all have to end up in the same place either. I know farmers that started with restaurants, then moved to CSA's because that was simply a better market for them and matched their holistic context. It's all about what works for you. I can only give my perspective and what I've seen, then offer some insight. But, there are many ways to do things and I certainly don't have all the answers.
Hi Curtis, Great tip so basically less land you have the less variety of high-value crop you should sell but then you need a lot of different buyers's I guess, where with more land you can afford to grow more varieties of lower value crop. I like the idea of while having small acreage you can cooperate with bigger CSA farms, and as you said making contacts with other farmers and learning, we have some of those in UK a lot of them community led.
Great advice.. This is my first year running a Csa and the early investment definitely does give the season a kick start! After this year I can say I like direct marketing for the cash flow as well a little better than Csa
In the UK, CSA stands for 'Child Support Agency' - Where divorced parents sort out payments / maintenance costs for any children that they have... I'm not sure how salad boxes can help here.
You can do videos on the crops that are the fastest ones and the slower ones and which one that has higher profits and the lowest profit ones. In my location as far as I know that the restaurants near me don’t have micro greens! That would be a good choice for me to take the average of in my area.
I have a gigantic amount of space (4 acres) i am starting a market farm solo and should be able to do CSA and keep the high value crops growing too
Thank you very much for the video I appreciate all your words of wisdom! So I have been wanting to do a CSA for the past two years now, I live on 11 acres and my garden is about an acre however I can expand it anytime. So this spring summer I will try to do a small CSA program and also look into trying to sell to some local restaurants and grocery stores. So my question is how do I go about selling to the restaurants when this will be technically my first year selling to the public? Wondering if you have a video on this and also the best way to bag and market or produce container wise label wise ??? Would I be better off just taking online course?!
Very helpful.
We're on our 4th year of a CSA after 2+ years of farmers market sales. (First year of CSA, 2014, we also sold surplus at the farmer's market occasionally.) I concur with all your points, except I am a little puzzled that you consider broccoli and cauliflower to be low value crops. Broccoli gives us a good 4-6 weeks of yield from one planting and cauliflower was the highest demand and the highest yield in $ at the farmer's market for us. The weeks we had cauliflower and broccoli it was sold out in the first half hour at what we thought were exorbitant prices.
Perhaps it is a space thing? Those heavy feeder brassicas do take a lot of room and can hold a spot for 80 days. Space is not a problem for us except very early in the season before our main growing areas dry out. (We have 19 acres between the two of us, though we only plant an acre or so right now, plus we have a 1 acre low pH remote field where we grow potatoes and winter squash. )
how about a half and half model? Selling maybe 30 shares for a nice chunk of early cash then use the rest of your room for farmers market?
That's what we're doing too! Or at least hope to sell in terms of CSA (half and half).
Getting involved with a start up CSA in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand. What software do you use to manage customers, crops, outsourcing, billing, etc.? Would prefer something Mac compatible with an iPhone interface, too.
Thank you for your advise. "CSA, I am not going to tell you here. Look it up on Google." So I stopped and did just that. Thank you for not wasting my time for something you could have said in 10 seconds. End of video.
If you were to plant a 50ft bed one behalf of a customer...where they order what gets planted in it...(or a local sponsor, to donate the food to a soup kitchen on their behalf, etc)... ...with a range of 10 veggie options or so... ...how much would you charge per bed?
I have access thousands of acres...so we can handle any number of beds. I was thinking $400 per bed, per season. Maybe $500.
What do you think?
In the UK CSA means Child Support Agency, so a google search for CSA is not helpful, thank you for the vid description tho as that tells me to search for Community Supported Agriculture and that yields the info I need
I would also think a big part of the decision is just the availability and proximity to restaurants or a farmer´s market. You have done some videos talking about restaurants, but I would imagine a lot of farmers don´t have dozens of restaurants for specialty crops as potential buyers. For many urban areas, marketing for CSA participants is probably much less work and requires less business sales experience, it is more folksy.
So what about on a large CSA? I mean I worked on a csa that was 1 acre by the greenhouse and around 10 acres around the property.
Would it be unrealistic to start a CSA on 500-1000 acres? I'm willing to buy a 3-row raised bed layer. I already have a large cattle and hay operation but want to diversify into something bigger that involves the community around me. I have always loved the idea of a CSA, but lack experience in growing fruits and vegetables, especially on a large scale. is this something that you would consult on? I thought I would reach out to my extension agent but they rarely have good advice. What is the learning curve to growing vegetables on a successful level?
I'm interested in a CSA because I'm about to rent an acre, don't have a place to put a bubbler/spinner, and don't want to worry about produce wilting much. Therefore, I don't want to grow an acre of greens. It would be too much for me to do alone. However, if I do a CSA, greens may be less than 10% of the box!
That iPhone 7 takes really sharp videos.
csa would be good for a bigger orchard tho 30 acres for examole
+milton morris Yes for sure.
For inquiring minds: Community Supported Agriculture
Thanks 😎👍
Canadian Space Agency?
CSA - Canadian Space Agency. Good clients
Do your neighbors think your nuts walking around talking to a selfie stick? Haha. I like what you're doing. I have a 4400 acre cattle ranch here in Montana and thinking of doing a CSA of a sort to bring in more income. How do your greenhouses hold up to strong winds?
People have always thought I'm nuts. It's impossible to innovate and get shit done without people thinking that. I could care less what people think though. I just do my thing! So far, they hold up great. I probably don't have winds like you though.
Urban Farmer Curtis Stone that's right. You can't innovate with out thinking outside the box. I'v noticed people that say you can't, can't stop watching over your shoulder as you do! Look forward to reading your book.
I looked it up it told me confederate states of America
I looked it up and had: CSA electrical norms.
The South will rise again, through the power of urban farming.
Canadian Space Agency (;
If you look up "CSA farm" you will find a good result.
Michael Dexter Just tell us what it means!
Curtis, can I start a CSA in a town where there is no CSA?
+sapogeorge sure, why not. Having said that, you still need to do some market research.
11³VA
it would have taken you 10 seconds to explain it
Maybe you could make a 10 second video then.
Love your videos and the clarity offered. Given your 'worldwide' audience I wonder why you would not say what CSA meant in your jurisdiction. For many other jurisdictions it means Child Sexual Abuse which I'm sure was not what you intended. Funny how Baal has us confused . . .
Because I'm talking about farming. I would assume most people have the ability to put "farm CSA" into Google.
Sometimes the low capicity of basical understanding or intelligence is just fascinating...
If you are already interested in the topic of urban or community farming, it may be logical to assume you came across the term CSA or Community Supported Agriculture already.
Another great video. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community-supported_agriculture and robbwolf.com/2011/02/09/community-supported-agriculture-how-to-find-join-a-csa/
Here in Australia csa is child support agency