Awakening Community Intelligence: CSA Farms as 21st Century Cornerstones

By Steven McFadden

Over the last decades many thousands of people in all parts of the world have come to recognize in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) a vehicle for approaching land, food, labor, environment and community in a healthier way.

Now – in an era with increasing shadows of environmental catastrophe – it’s time to expand exponentially the CSA vision and reality. The opportunity is before us to establish hundreds of thousands of CSA farms in nations around the world, and to thereby employ a proven, egalitarian model to address the radically changing circumstances in our environment, climate, economics, and social relationships.

This book lays out the vision, and sounds a call to action.

Author Steven McFadden is a journalist who has been writing about CSA since its inception in the USA in the late 1980s.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steven McFadden
• Release date: May 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311507341

Steven McFadden

I've been an independent writer since 1975 when I graduated from journalism school at Boston University. Since then I've been happily involved with my life's work writing, and consulting. Over the years I've authored hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, blog posts, and over a dozen nonfiction books.It's my honor to have served as the author of an epic, nonfiction saga of contemporary America, Odyssey of the 8th Fire. It's freely available online at www.8thfire.net Odyssey of the 8th Fire is the true, epic saga of a historic pilgrimage for the earth across North America by people of all colors and faiths under the Sky Sign of the Whirling Rainbow. The 8th Fire arises from the deepest roots of our land. In it, circles upon circles, elders make a great and generous giveaway of the teachings they carry.The titles I have listed on Smashwords arise out of the Soul*Sparks publishing venture in which I partner with my wife, Elizabeth Wolf.As of 2019, I'm designating Chiron Communications, my umbrella publishing venture, as the publisher for the book I've recently finished writing, "Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food, and Our Future." The eBook version will be available here on Smashwords.Peace and good cheer, Steven

Book preview

~ Awakening Community Intelligence ~

CSA Farms

as 21st Century Cornerstones

By Steven McFadden

Soul*Sparks Books

Copyright © 2015 by Steven McFadden as a Soul*Sparks ebook

ISBN: 9781311507341

License Notes for this Soul*Sparks edition

This e-book is created and licensed for your information and reading enjoyment. We offer it for sale as the result of our travels, our encounters, our learning, and the value we contribute with our writing and publishing efforts. All rights reserved. World rights reserved.

Cover photo by curiouslee via flickr (Creative Commons).

Cover design by Elizabeth Wolf

Acknowledgments

Many people have earned my respect and gratitude for their influence, for their sophisticated insights, and for their support, especially the farmers and families of the Temple-Wilton Community Farm, and the many diligent stewards of the earth who are our neighbors in Nebraska, New Mexico and across the Americas. With fullness I thank my Muse and my partner in life: Elizabeth Wolf. Great thanks also to the many farmers and earth patriots of the world – the wide-ranging communities of human beings who originated the models of co-ops and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), and who continue to cultivate them. Their plentiful insights are woven into this e-book with the intention of appropriate acknowledgement. My gratitude to one and all. ~ SM

For twin brother

Michael Dennis McFadden

(1948-2015)

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Awakening Community Intelligence

Chapter 2: Creating a Future

Chapter 3: Three Dormant Seeds

Chapter 4: Marketing Strategy or Web of Relationships?

Chapter 5: Revisiting Farms of Tomorrow Revisited

Chapter 6: Virtual Community

Chapter 7: Core Matters

Chapter 8: Shared Risks, Shared Budgets

Chapter 9: Conflict Resolution

Chapter 10: Quintessence of Community Intelligence

Bibliography

About the Author

Websites for the Author

Book Reviews

Soul*Spark Books

Other Soul*Sparks titles

INTRODUCTION

Over the last decades many thousands of people in all parts of the world have come to recognize in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) a vehicle for approaching land, food, labor, environment and community in a healthier way. Now – in an era with increasing shadows of environmental catastrophe – it’s time to expand exponentially the CSA vision and reality. The opportunity is before us.

CSA is a social and economic arrangement in which specific communities – neighborhoods, churches, workplaces, and so forth – willingly share responsibility with specific farmers for producing, delivering, enjoying and honoring the food that sustains them. The community supports the farm, and the farm supports the community.

In theory and generally in practice, the associations integral to CSA foster mutual respect. CSA has thus emerged as a dynamic pathway linking human beings and their communities directly in free-will association with nearby farms and the farmers who touch the earth on their behalf. These farmers may rightly be regarded as our ambassadors to the earth. Rather than making war on nature, they strive to cooperate intelligently and thereby maintain respectful relations. They are making an important and positive difference in the world. Much more is necessary. Much more is possible.

To a greater or lesser extent, each CSA establishes itself as a kind of cornerstone to anchor and orient the communities of human beings who congregate in relation to it. CSA offers an approach to land and food that works economically and sustainably in a host of situations, and thus can be further developed as a model for 21st century communities and the sophisticated networks they create within and among themselves.

As amply demonstrated across the Internet, CSA farms tend naturally to accomodate digital, high-tech advances, and skillfully to weave them into their webs of land, food and human beings. To the extent that a given CSA functions as a community cornerstone or touchstone, it has established a dynamic form that enables the community to focus its resources and strengths for a common good.

Our civilization is now reckoning with profound disruptions associated with climate change, resource depletion and geopolitical instability. Of critical note, this year 30 of the world’s largest insurance companies, known for their conservative approach in all matters, have established a formal coalition (SmarterSafer) to sound the alarm, and let people, corporations and governments know that we face increasingly extreme circumstances. It’s going to be perilous and costly for everyone. Meanwhile, Standard & Poor’s Rating Service – the world’s foremost credit ranking company – has issued a report saying that the credit ratings of sovereign countries will be adversely affected by global climate chaos.

These hard realities are indisputable.