Meeting Farm and Food Security Needs through Community Supported Agriculture and Farmers’ Markets in California

Research Brief #9 In the face of an increasingly consolidated, industrialized, and often faceless food system, many researchers and activists have looked to alternative food institutions (AFIs) as ways to improve the food system for both producers and consumers. AFIs include urban gardens, food policy councils, alternative education programs, farmers’ markets, and community supported agriculture (Allen et al. 2003). These last two are of particular interest because many perceive them to be win-win for both producers and consumers. That is, even though farmers’ markets and CSAs were originally developed to provide markets for the increasingly beleaguered small-scale and family farmers, recently the goals of food security have been attached to these AFIs. At least since the 1995 Farm Bill discussions, the community food security and sustainable agriculture movements have made a strategic alliance, combining the goals of farm security and food security in their platforms and projects (Allen 2004). Among their strategies for achieving these goals is the continued development of alternative agrifood institutions, including farmers’ markets and community supported agriculture (CSA) arrangements. The hope is that eliminating market intermediaries will improve the food system for both disadvantaged small-scale farmers and low-income consumers. Is it possible to simultaneously make fresh, nutritious food affordable to low-income people while providing a decent return to small-scale farmers through farmers’ markets and CSAs? Certainly, direct marketing opportunities like farmers’ markets and CSAs can be economic lifelines for small-scale growers, particularly those using sustainable farming practices. Not only do direct markets enable growers to avoid transactions with middlemen and sell products at retail prices (Griffin and Frongillo 2003), they also often provide the only space through which small-scale farmers with limited production can enter the market. Several studies have documented the benefits of direct markets to small-scale farmers (Andreatta and Wickliffe 2002; Feenstra et al. 2003; Govindasamyet al. 2003). Less is known, however, about how well they serve low-income consumers. The goal of our research, therefore, was to see how and to what extent California CSAs and farmers’ markets are addressing food security in both concept and practice. We focused our research on these two types of AFIs because they best exemplify the idea of an economic “win-win” situation for farmers and consumers. Also, unlike farm-to-school programs and community gardens, which tend to operate as public-private partnerships, farmers’ markets and CSAs operate more fully under the constraints and opportunities of the market.