[Sosfbay-discuss] whole foods boycott side effects

[Paco NATHAN]

Hi Eric,

Good point, I should have described more about CSAs. That acronym
stands for "community sponsored agriculture".  Here are a couple of
good links:

http://www.localharvest.org/csa/
http://www.localdirt.com/

For less than we'd spend at grocery stores on fresh veggies (we like
to cook), we subscribe to a local CSA. Every week they bring a truck
to some particular locations near us (we live in MV) and swap our
empty box from last week, with one full of veggies, herbs, fruits,
flowers, etc. I've seen other CSAs which include products made from
their farm produce: jams/jellies, herbal soaps, cheeses.

The idea is that people develop relationships directly with the
farmers. Then the buying/selling of food becomes more than just a
financial transaction, it's a kind of shared risk, and two-way
learning. The farmers get to know the people eating their food, and
understand more about what the people in a particular community need.
The subscribers (like our family) learn more about local, seasonal
foods -- how to cook what's ripening this week, how to preserve
whatever is in oversupply, what grows well historically in your
community.

For example, anybody here know why we don't get many local potatoes?
They grow here, but not much commercially -- though they used to be.
Our CSA rotates potatoes through, provides some *tasty* fingerlings,
and had a great story about what happened to potato growers in our
part of California. They also bring in a chef from SF to prepare
recipes for whatever is harvested that week...

I enjoyed similar farmer+chef pairings in Austin: Boggy Creek Farm
there works with locals chefs (Jean-Luc Salles is probably the best
known one) for events. Some events were "buy a ticket, learn to
prepare fine meals from local foods, eat the food and drink the wine",
others were charity benefits, and one was even a stage drama
production (where the audience ate meals cooked by the performers).
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Food/Blogs/?oid=oid:696823


On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 23:22, Eric A. Meece <eameece at sfo.com> wrote:
> I know that Whole Foods has driven the local natural food stores out of
> business.
> But I'm sorry, what is a "CSA"?