Smarter Food: The flexible CSA box

If it’s February, it must be time to feel guilty.

It’s not because I’ve broken any new-year diet resolutions. (I don’t make any.) It’s because I will not join a CSA.

Community-supported agriculture programs, or CSAs, traditionally offer a weekly box of seasonal produce from a local farm. Customers pay upfront so the farmer has the cash on hand to buy seeds and equipment, and a guide for what and how much to grow. (Some plans also require that members put in a few hours’ work on the farm.) In exchange they receive an assortment of whatever is ready for harvest that week. That might mean a lot of greens in early spring and an overload of tomatoes in high summer — or if there’s a blight, no tomatoes at all. The benefit, or so they tell me, is that participation supports local growers and teaches families to cook with what Mother Nature provides rather than the global panoply of foods available year-round at the grocery store.

Maybe. But a model designed to serve the producer and not the customer will never be, well, sustainable. And in my experience, CSA customers get the short end of the stick. If I take a vacation in the summer, I pay for food I never receive. If I want more food one week to throw a party and less the next? Tough luck.

The good news is that farmers and a new crop of food entrepreneurs are getting the message that, at least some of the time, the customer should have options. Flexible CSA models are sprouting up around the country, proving that subscription services can work for farmers and consumers. Some, dubbed multi-farm CSAs, offer produce from a network of small farms for more variety. Others let customers choose what and how much goes into their weekly box or use pre-paid credit at the farmers market or online.

“My customers have a lot of things in their lives, and this can’t be their total focus,” says Karen Pendleton, a farmer in Lawrence, Kan., who started a CSA in 2011. “The goal is to get local food in the hands of people who are less committed to the idea and do it in a way that is comfortable and convenient for them.”

Her business, Pendleton’s Country Market, offers two options to CSA customers. Some pay $15 a week for a standard box, which they pick up at a local day-care center. That makes sense to a lot of customers because they don’t have to make a special trip to get their food; they’re picking up their children at the same time. Others choose to buy a monthly punch card, a kind of limited-expiration gift card, which allows them to spend $60 in pre-paid credit at Pendleton’s farmers market stand. They can buy some produce each week or spend it all in one go if, say, they are canning tomatoes or making salsa to put away for the winter. Shoppers can buy a card every month or only at times when they know they want a lot of produce. The scheme helps busy customers, and Pendleton is saved the trouble of packing bags for individual shares.

Closer to home, there’s Star Hollow Farm. Owners Randy and Chris Treichler have built an online ordering system for their 400 members. Customers pay $300 to join, then choose what and how much they want on any given week. The cost of their order is deducted from their account, and they can add money whenever they need to. In high season, they can order every Wednesday for Saturday pickup at the Adams Morgan farmers market. Or they can skip a week or even several months with no penalty.