Subject: Re: Salt Creek Farm CSA Turnover

From: [email-masked] (Sarah Milstein)
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1996 14:54:41 GMT

Further responses to questions that are many months old... 
 
On May 13, 1996 23:45:26, [email-masked] (Douglas Hendrickson)' wrote: 
 
> 
>I would like to know what other CSAs are doing in the way of outreach.
What 
>works well and what doesn't. Have any of you approached the religious  
>communities for support and have they responded?  
 
In Albany, NY, one of the three delivery areas for Roxbury Farm, the bulk
of the membership was initially recruited through a project of the Roman
Catholic Diocese there.  It seemed a natural match -- what with their
built-in community structure and interest in supporting grass roots
organizations (no pun intended).  And the Roxbury delivery site in NYC is a
large church, a number of whose members have joined the farm. 
 
But a couple of CSAs in western Mass have told me that they've had no luck
whatsoever with religious groups.  
 
I imagine much rests on the enthusiasm for CSA of the religious community
leaders, and if one group is not responsive, another may well be.  Based on
our experience, it would be well worth pursuing a few. 
 
>What kind of effort have you  
>made to reach out to the poor? 
 
Although we donate our surplus to a large food pantry in NYC (one, in fact,
that operates out of the church where we have our veg distribution), we're
just begining to explore the ways in which we can offer regular shares to a
more diverse economic population.  Ideas that we hope to incorporate in the
next season include:  food stamps; scholarship shares (partial and full);
sliding scale share prices; and payment over time.  While we believe we can
support some or all of these options financially, we have not yet worked
out the ways in which we'll reach new individuals and communicate with
them.   
 
That is, I'm not assuming that low-income residents are uneducated or
indifferent towards clean produce and local farming issues, but they've
probably got less access to the relevant information that our upper middle
class members have (NYTimes articles, Sierra Club bulletins, The Nation,
etc.) and may need some different types of materials and/or presentations
to introduce them to CSA (and keep them in it!).  For instance, many
immigrants in NYC come from rural areas and might be very interested in
having a relationship with a family farm, but have little awareness of
organics.  So perhaps a successful conversation in those communities
(besides being in another language or involving an interpreter) might focus
on agricultural issues more than environmental/health ones.  We're
currently working on this piece of our nascent campaign to diversify our
membership. 
 
Of course, low-income urban residents and low-income rural residents
present some different challenges (as do middle- and high-income residents
everywhere!).  Either way, I'd certainly like to hear about other CSAs'
experiences with low-income members. 
 
Sarah

---

From: [email-masked] (Sarah Milstein)
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1996 15:13:06 GMT

On May 14, 1996 12:44:46, '"Peter D. Miller" <[email-masked]>' wrote: 

>Hi-I'm Peter Miller from Prairieland CSA in Champaign, IL.  Our farmer is 
>paying with vegetables and share discounts to prepare "crop sheets"  for 
>all the different things that (we hope) will be harvested this year.  The 
>sheets will contain information about the crop (history, nutrition info., 
>etc.) as well as a few recipes.  So by the end of the season, we'll have 
>48 of these sheets, ready to go for next year.  I imagine that we'll also 
>post the sheets on the web so that people elsewhere can use them and 
>improve on them.  
> 
>Has anyone else already done something like this?  If so, it would  
>certainly be helpful to get a look at them (In fact, if they already  
>exist, then we might be able to focus our efforts on updating them and  
>making them available to other groups via the web!) 
 
I'm in the very last stages of a handbook for Roxbury Farm that includes a
"Produce at a Glance" section developed by one of our full-time gardeners,
who happens to be a nutritionist.  When I get the whole document together,
I'll make it available somewhere handy on the Net. 
 
In the meantime, I have a looseleaf book from a CSA in upstate NY that has
a page for each of about 50 vegetables, with info, recipes and beautiful
drawings.  It's at home, and I'm at work, but I'll post the info about it
tonight. 
 
Sarah