What one word might describe the perfect CSA in the year 2011?
“Bigger.”
At least that’s the main solution suggested in a recent workshop for operators of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms in the Mid-Atlantic region. The day-long session, sponsored by the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (www.pasafarming.org), was entitled “Growing Your CSA: What size is right for you?”

“This workshop is intended for CSA operators interested in improving or enlarging their CSA business,” PASA said in promoting the workshop.  “In the morning you’ll hear brief descriptions of various CSA models ranging in size from 80 to 1,900, and in maturity from one to 17 years.  After lunch you’ll have your choice of participating in working groups led by the presenters and addressing specific challenges to CSA growth and  profitability.”

Despite the workshop’s emphasis on getting bigger, profitability and increased food safety soon emerged as essential elements for successful CSAs, today and into the future.

One thing all of the CSAs have going for them is plenty of people. They are located  in or near some of the most heavily populated areas of the country. That works both for and against farmers. While customers and markets are plentiful, farmland is increasingly scarce and expensive. Taxes are high and rising. So it was no wonder that more than 30 relatively new and smaller CSA operators paid to attend the workshop and learn how to improve their CSAs.
Here is a quick look at six CSAs, followed by the marketing and management advice CSA farmers offered:

80 members, first year
Living Hope Farm is a non-profit, start-up CSA on 40 acres of land owned by the Mennonite Church. In 2005, the church was offered $5.5 million for the land, said farm manager Jill Landes.
“Sell it!” roared the congregations in the Philadelphia area.
“Keep it!” countered rural congregations.
The rural church members prevailed, said Landes. The farm is located in Harleysville, PA, in suburban Montgomery County, which has a population of 799,874, according to the 2010 census. Landes had previously worked  at Branch Creek Farm in nearby Perkasie.

Living Hope had 80 members in 2010. This year, the CSA will have 150.  The farm also sells to four area restaurants. Each CSA member is required to work four hours on the farm during the season.  “Eighty is not THAT big.  Going from 80 to 150 sounds huge, but with … interns, we can cover it,” said Landes.   A full share costs $750, a half-share $400. Interns are paid $800 per month, plus food and housing.  The CSA is presently seeking two interns.
Living Hope gives away 10 percent of its produce to poor parishioners and the homeless in South Philadelphia. This is “First Food,” a Mennonite term for top quality — not seconds — that is every bit as good as the food going to paying customers. The farm started out with just land and a few old buildings. The board of the non-profit that runs the farm quickly raised $90,000 to upgrade the old farmhouse and barn. The board chairperson has deep pockets and helped finance other needed improvements.
“There are people out there with money who are willing to see these things happen,” said Landes.
 
500 members, 9th year
Before starting his own Red Earth Farm CSA, Mike Ahlert worked for four years for the now-defunct Covered Bridge Produce. The first year on his own (2002), Ahlert had 30 CSA members and sold at two farmers markets. The second year, he had 50 members.  The third year, 150. In 2010, Ahlert had slightly more than 500 members. His farm is located on the outer fringe of the big population center of southeastern Pennsylvania in Schuylkill County, population 148,289.
“Growth at the farmers markets was touch and go. We did not really sell enough. The CSA is more of a guaranteed market,” he said. That makes it easier to prepare a realistic budget and plan needed improvements.

For three seasons, Ahlert rented five acres. In 2006, he bought his first farm. Three years later, he bought  a second and larger farm farther out in the country.  Many of his customers are in the nearby Lehigh Valley, the third most populated area in the state with more than 800,000 residents.

Ahlert does not use interns. He hires up to 10 seasonal employees at the peak of the season at $8 to $12 an hour.
“It’s a money pit,” Ahlert said of having so many employees. “From day one I had people help me on my farm. It’s easy to throw a lot of money into employees.” The challenge is how to grow the farm, not the payroll. He keeps one person on through winter.

Ahlert offers full veggie shares (10 items) for $585, and partial shares (six items) for $425. But his CSA does more than just veggies, providing a ready market for many neighboring farmers:
• Buyer’s Club (initial deposit of $35) opens an account and access to  “per item” produce purchases.
• Chicken Share one whole and one quartered chicken five times a season for $192.
• Egg and Double Egg Shares — One or two dozen eggs delivered biweekly for $44 to $88, respectively.
• Fruit and Double Fruit Share, everything from strawberries to cider biweekly for $117 to $234.
• Herb Share, $62.
• Meat Share, variety pack of chicken, ground beef, stew meat and pork sausage monthly for five months, $255.
• Yogurt Share (plain or variety), $101.50, each.
“Fruit and meat shares add significantly to the bottom line,” he said.  Ahlert also sells at two popular farmers markets.

1,500 members, 5th year
Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative describes itself as “a non-profit organic farmers cooperative.” Based in Leola, PA, the coop started in 2006 with just nine farmers and 100 CSA customers. The next year, it grew to 23 farmers, and learned the hard way that having an independent truck driver — who was about as “independent” as they come — wouldn’t work, said General Manager Casey Spacht.

In 2008, the coop leased trucks and started its own trucking company. The next year, it moved into a too-small 3,000-square-foot warehouse and sparked a neighborhood riot, complete with police and angry neighbors.  “We’ve definitely had our struggles,” added Spacht.

Today, Lancaster Farm Fresh sells for 75 member-farmers throughout Lancaster County, PA. The coop supplies more than 1,500 CSA customers in five states. It has 53 CSA pickup sites sites in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, Maryland and Virginia.  The coop has a staff of 36 that includes eight drivers, five of them full-time. Pay ranges from $9 to $15 an hour. Its business model was based on the granddaddy of organic marketing coops, Tuscarora Organic Growers.
Lancaster Farm Fresh offers “fresh, local, organic produce and grass-fed meat products, grown on small family farms.” A full vegetable share includes seven to 12 items each week for 25 weeks and costs $700. A half share of four to seven weekly items is priced at $425. The coop also offers 20-week fruit shares starting at $180, and flower shares of one bouquet per week from $280.

The CSA also offers a CSM program — Community Supported Medicine. For $180, the up to 100 shareholders in the “Lancaster Farmacy” receive 12 biweekly deliveries of two to three fresh medicinal herbs (chamomile, lemon balm and hyssop) or tinctures, tonics, salves, oils and herb-infused bath salts.

The coop’s farmer-members are mostly Amish. Selling through the coop allows them to stay home on their farms and farm, while the coop staff handles marketing and distribution. Besides CSA customers, the coop wholesales cases or pallets of produce to restaurants, grocers and institutions in the Lancaster, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, DC, metropolitan areas.

Food safety is becoming more and more important, not necessarily because of new laws, but because the coop’s farmers are so well supplied with fresh horse manure, said Spacht. The coop now provides member-farmers with Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) training.

300 members, 6th year
With student loans to pay off and no money, Tom Murtha said his Blooming Glenn Farm CSA just “had to work.”  With 100 members, it did.  “We survived our first year (2006).”

The second year, Murtha sold 150 shares and hired his first worker. In 2011, the CSA plans to have 325 to 350 members. One share costs $710. All pickups are at the farm, which offers U-pick beans, cherry tomatoes and flowers. “We have a huge flower patch and people just love to pick their own flowers,” Murtha said.

The farm occupies 25 preserved acres in Perkasie, PA, Bucks County. It offers 75 different varieties of vegetables, fruits, flowers and herbs to CSA customers. Murtha’s customers include area restaurants and natural foods stores. He also sells at three farmers’ markets, one each on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Murtha and his partner, Tricia Borneman, have been farming together for 11 years on organic farms in Connecticut, Oregon, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. They settled in  Bucks County because that is where Tricia grew up. Farming in the suburbs has its challenges, starting with finding affordable housing for farmers and employees alike.  Blooming Glenn will have four employees each making about $1,000 a month this year.  Another four to five local people will be hired on an hourly basis at $11 an hour.

“Your CSA is only as strong as the people you hire,” Murtha said. Hiring the right people is tough, he added, citing the adage that “It’s easier to do the work of eight people than hire eight people.” To help improve labor efficiency, he has an employee manual, complete with job descriptions. Murtha said he tries to empower workers and act like a business owner, instead of a micro-manager.

150 members, 3rd year
The non-profit Snipes Farm and Education Center in Morrisville, PA, consists of 150 permanently preserved acres in Bucks County, PA, population 625,000, said manager Brad Berry. It is opposite Trenton, a city of 85,000, which is also the state capitol of New Jersey. “We are a piece of green surrounded by suburbia,” Berry said. So room to grow — and room for growing — is definitely limited. Berry said 200 CSA customers is probably his limit. He now cultivates eight to 10 acres.  Depending on growth, he may push that to 12 acres.

His rows are planted on 36-inch centers. That uses more land than he would like, but it makes cultivation a lot easier and quicker with the farm’s two Allis-Chalmers G tractors.

Snipes Farm offers only full shares to 150 households for $575 each. The season runs late May to Thanksgiving. It’s all you can eat. The farm washes produce and sets it out for shareholders to put in bags they bring themselves. The farm does not pack boxes.

In 2011, Berry plans to have 175 to 200 CSA members.  Sales come via his web site and word-of-mouth.  

1,900 members, 11 years
Joan Norman and her husband, Drew, started farming in 1985, but it wasn’t until 1999 that they started selling through a CSA.  “The wholesale market was pinching us,” Joan explained. Competitors included other large organic farms such as Lady Moon and Spiral Path.

The jump to a CSA was a natural.  From years of supplying wholesale markets, she said, “it was easy to know how much we could grow.”  The Norman’s One Straw Farm  is now the largest certified organic farm in Maryland. Last year it was also certified by the Food Alliance.

Located in White Hall, MD, One Straw has 46 drop-off sites in the metropolitan Baltimore area. The farm has 1,900 CSA customers. The farm sells a full CSA share (eight items a week for 24 weeks) for from $515 to $570, allowing for early discounts, and a half-share for from $260 to $290.

With so many customers, that adds up to “a quick million bucks,” Joan said. Popular perception is that’s all going into her pocket. “It’s not!” she said — not with 17 employees, an almost equal number of tractors and all of the other spiraling expenses that go along with running a large farm these days.

The farm has all of the business it can handle.  “I really don’t advertise anymore,” she added.
“Don’t give too much food,” Joan cautioned.  “It’s the biggest cause of people dropping out. Customers complain, ‘I couldn’t eat it all in one week!’ Eight items is still too much food.” Joan said her customers are busy. “They only eat one meal a day at home.”  Belonging to the CSA is the thing that everybody wants, she added.

Sage advice for CSAs
• Grow smarter, instead of just bigger.
• Be realistic with budget projections. Bills have to be paid year-round, so generate income for more than just six months at a time. Save some money as you go. Consider your lifestyle, your family’s needs and how comfortable you want to be. Plan accordingly.
• Be distinctive with your CSA’s offerings, pricing and containers. Find your market niche.  Pursue what you love.
• Get paid a living wage. Don’t just live from paycheck to paycheck. Consider off-farm income to help maintain your lifestyle.
• Constantly adapt your operation to make it work for you and your customers.
• Make sure everything you do is worth your while. Stress efficiency in distribution.
• Have second and third outlets for what you produce. Farmers markets and restaurant sales are naturals.
• Keep your options open.
• Don’t try to grow everything yourself. Partner with other producers — dairies, fruit farms, grass-fed livestock farms and even a winery — to offer customers the convenience of one-stop shopping.
• Encourage customers to come out to the farm with musical and other cultural, even political events. On-farm pickups and frequent customer contact boosts CSA renewals. Offer a produce “swap table” or “seconds table.”  “People come to the farm to reconnect with the land,” said Joan Norman.
• Focus on customer satisfaction, retention and communication. One Straw Farm is big on year-end customer surveys. “But don’t ask questions you don’t want to hear the answer to,” said Norman. That includes issues “you can’t do something about.”  Instead of asking “Yes” and “No” questions, use a rating scale of from one to five to gauge customer satisfaction or unhappiness.
• Use modern technology to make it easier for you and your customers.  Have a web site and use Facebook and Twitter.
• Mike Ahlert sends e-mails to all of his customers in December. He offers a 3 percent discount to returning members, a 5 percent discount for early renewals. His cutoff date is the end of January. For the first time people will be able to pay through PayPal on his web site this year. Accept credit cards. The 2 percent credit card fees are well worth the extra convenience.
• For more regular cash flow, plan on sales before and after the regular CSA season.

Safety first and last
One Straw Farm has annual sales of more than $500,000. That makes it “one of the Big Boys,” and subject to new federal food safety laws and regulations, Norman said.  “I am not looking forward to this year,” she quipped.
Even if your sales are less than $500,000 a year, Norman warned that you shouldn’t ignore food safety.  Instead of waiting for government regulators to catch up with you, be proactive. Get out in front of the food safety curve. Voluntarily develop your own hazard analysis plan, get training and train your employees in safe food handling — before the government makes you. Don’t count on the small farm exemption to get you off of the food safety hook. Safe food is just good business. It’s also good for business — and is everyone’s business.
As we went to press, a number of states were beginning to gear up new food safety initiatives that will impact all farmers, especially those who sell through farmers markets and CSAs, regardless of sales levels. We will have much more on that in the next issue of Growing for Market.

George DeVault is the owner of Pheasant Hill Farm in Emmaus, PA, where he and his wife grow vegetables and cut flowers. They ran a 100-member CSA for several years.