Mark Paul on "Community Supported Agriculture and Sustainable Farm Livelihoods."

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Professor Mark Paul and Student Caroline Beckmann

On Friday, November 20th, Professor Mark Paul of the University of Massachusetts Amherst spoke during log lunch on ideas focused on CSA’s and their economic value. Paul came from a food-focused background. He attended culinary school then worked as a chef. Both experiences leading to his frustration with the current food system. Health food, he realized, is both expensive and exclusive. People need to be able to afford good food.

 

Professor Paul put together a book focusing on a group of environmental initiatives and evaluating them. His question was: People love engaging in these activities, but are they helpful? Can they get us where we want to go? The information he shared at the Log Lunch focused on Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs). Using certain criteria, Paul focused on whether CSAs improve access to land and access to food.

 

 

 

Positives of CSAs Paul Shared:

• On an average farm, one acre of corn is worth $468. A CSA can make up to $20,000 per acre.
• CSAs average 38 vegetables per farm. Avoiding monocropping allows for healthier vegetable production and more expensive products to sell.
• CSAs help us regain access to land and to build a community aspect.
• CSAs receive no benefits from the government. They do not receive crop insurance or subsidies.

Although there are many positives to the CSA model, Paul also shared a few drawbacks to CSA farming:
• The community members investing in the CSA to receive the farmed products are risking their money. Climate disasters like floods or droughts can cause major devastation to CSAs, and can destroy an entire crop.
• While one acre on a CSA can make more than one acre on an industrial farm, CSAs do not provide enough for farmers to make a comfortable living.
• CSAs are a lot of manual labor because they are not mechanized the way that industrial farms are.
• CSA shares community members buy are not inexpensive.

But overall, Professor Paul decided that CSAs are more beneficial than industrial farms; both for their surrounding communities and for the landscape where they are located. There are risks and challenges, but both Mark Paul and the farmers he spoke to believe that:

“Everyone should be able to get the highest quality produce always, and we need to figure out as a society how to make that happen” – Interview with a CSA Farmer

-Caroline Beckmann ’17