The Rolling Prairie Farmers Alliance was founded by eight eastern Kansas farm families in 1994 as a cooperative Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. We provide a bag of fresh produce each week for 26 weeks to 300 to 350 subscribers in Lawrence, Kansas, and Kansas City. The editors of GFM own one of the eight farms; although we wrote about Rolling Prairie in GFM a few times in the early years, we’ve undergone some changes since then that we wanted to tell you about. We also want you to know that the cooperative CSA is a model that works well for part-time farmers. After eight years, Rolling Prairie is still going strong.

We chose the initial participants by inviting all the certified-organic farmers in the Lawrence area to a meeting. Just about every one of us wanted to participate. As it turned out, only one of those people was a full-time farmer. The rest of us have other jobs that we either wanted to keep or couldn’t afford to trade in for farming. As attractive as the idea of CSA was to us, most of us simply didn’t have the time to operate a CSA individually. The cooperative approach seemed like a good way for us to provide variety and consistency.

Over the years, there have been some personnel changes. Our lone full-time farmer , a year-round culinary herb greenhouse grower, left to pursue other marketing strategies. A second farm dissolved and the farmers moved on. New farms were added with an eye toward weaknesses in the group. One farm provides poultry, eggs, pork and beef, which are not part of the bag but can be added on and are popular with subscribers. A second farmer is blessed with communication and computer skills, in addition to careful growing practices.

The third year after start-up, the farmers made the decision to expand from Lawrence into the Kansas City market, and now serve subscribers in a blue collar section of Kansas City, Kansas, and a more upscale neighborhood in Shawnee Mission, Kansas. All three drop-off sites are located in whole foods stores. Our retail hosts provide us space, tables, some advertising and a warm welcome. We are an addition to the ambiance of their stores, as they work to provide local and natural foods to their customers. We also increase their sales on distribution days, as Rolling Prairie members pick up other groceries along with their bag of produce.

All of the administrative work of the CSA is done by the farmers, some of whom are paid nominal salaries for their jobs. We have a “Bag Master” who decides what produce will make up each week’s bag, with an eye to customer satisfaction, but also assuring each grower that they will make the income goals each farmer sets out before the season begins. The Bag Master decides whose cabbage to take this week, or whether the subscribers have already received too much cabbage. He compiles his weekly menu from the faxed availability lists from each farmer. Then he faxes back to each farmer the list of what each must bring to the distribution. He is paid $1,600.

We also have a Coordinator at each of the three drop-off sites. This person sets up on delivery day, deals with customers, bills and collects from them, or forgives them if they forget to pick up their bag or can’t get there on time. Decisions made about customer service are not questioned by the other farmers. Each is paid $1,000.
One of our farmers is also a CPA, and he provides accounting and tax services for a salary of $1,200.

Everyone else volunteers time at a drop-off site or writes for the weekly newsletter.
Each year we decide how many subscribers we will have based on what each farmer wants to make through Rolling Prairie. Income targets from growers this year vary from $4,000 to $30,000. These sums are added together, and divided by the amount we expect each subscriber to pay (this year, $12 per week for 26 weeks, or $312). That number gives us the number of subscribers we need. We charge a $50 fee to join the first year, which includes a copy of Rolling Prairie Cookbook, and $40 thereafter. That sum, together with the profit from the few things we buy from other growers, and resell at retail, makes up our operating budget of around $10,000.

Most growers have expanded slowly each year, but this year, our eighth, we are scaling back a bit. That’s primarily because the GFM editors have agreed to manage a floral department at our natural foods coop, which is moving into a big new store. We have increased our flower production to satisfy what we hope will be a big demand for flowers, and reduced our vegetable production. This had the effect of reducing the subscriber base we need by about 30 or 40 families. The fact that one farm can change its business without affecting the income of the other coop members is one of the strong points of this model.

Rolling Prairie has not been without problems. As every farmer knows, we’re an independent-minded bunch, with strong opinions about everything. And we do get stressed out sometimes from the demands of feeding 300 families cooperatively every week. But we have been able to ride through conflicts because it is in everyone’s best interest to keep the group together.

The Kansas Rural Center has published a 75-page booklet about the Rolling Prairie Farmers Alliance, which includes farmer profiles, our Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws, and all our working documents. It is called “Subscribing to Change” and is available from the Kansas Rural Center for $7; send checks to KRC, PO Box 133, Whiting, KS 66552; www.kansasruralcenter.org