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. There is intrinsic value in buying locally, organically grown produce. The piece also fails to break down the cost to the consumer. 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. 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. But they must sign up ahead of time, and many CSAs get booked up far in advance.įor example, the Golden Earthworm Organic Farm, one of the ones mentioned in the Times’s story, isn’t accepting new members for 2008. 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. 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. But what’s most frustrating about this piece is its timing. This is hardly the first trend story that doesn’t really shed new light on its topic. But these days “CSA” is a buzzword on all the greenies’ lips-and suddenly everything old is new again. In fact, the first time the Times covered the CSA story was in 1987, when the trend was truly emerging. 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 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. Today’s New York Times fronts a hunger-inducing story on how consumers are partnering with farms to support local growing. 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.
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