Oh, glorious summer bounty! Strawberries! Raspberries! Plums! Grocery stores and farmers’ markets are brimming with fruits of the harvest, which maybe explains why newspapers across the country have community-supported agriculture (CSA) on their minds. Today’s New York Times fronts a hunger-inducing story on how consumers are partnering with farms to support local growing. In recent weeks, reporters from The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer have also frolicked among the verdant berry patches of their local CSAs.
The Times gives the story its typical trend treatment: Catching onto a movement about five years too late, declaring it new and relevant, and ignoring the fact that it’s been covered in the mainstream media before. In fact, the first time the Times covered the CSA story was in 1987, when the trend was truly emerging. But these days “CSA” is a buzzword on all the greenies’ lips—and suddenly everything old is new again.
This is hardly the first trend story that doesn’t really shed new light on its topic. But what’s most frustrating about this piece is its timing. CSAs work on a subscription basis. If readers get beyond the hefty price tags—some CSAs charge up to $800 to participate—they can sign up for a share in the farm. In exchange for the moolah—and, in some cases, manual labor on the farm—they’ll receive baskets of fresh fruit and vegetables throughout the growing season. But they must sign up ahead of time, and many CSAs get booked up far in advance.
For example, the Golden Earthworm Organic Farm, one of the ones mentioned in the Times’s story, isn’t accepting new members for 2008. To participate in 2009, customers have to remember to get their act together in November, when the farm will make applications available on its site. Although the piece admits that many farms aren’t taking new clients, it fails to mention just how early readers will have to act in order to join the club next year. What a bummer!
The piece also fails to break down the cost to the consumer. There is intrinsic value in buying locally, organically grown produce. But is it more expensive than shopping at the local mega mart? And how are these small farms handling the rise in fuel costs? If they set their prices earlier this year, they may not have built in enough of a cushion to take the sting out of soaring gas prices. Any and all of these points would have made for a more interesting angle on this familiar story. Instead, here’s what we get: “CSAs are neat!”
They indubitably are, and it’s good that the Times thinks its readers should know about them. But, come November, when it’s time to act, will readers remember this article?
Katia Bachko is on staff at The New Yorker.