Community Supported Agriculture in Chiang Mai Province
Bringing good food to good people from good farmers at good prices, and telling the story
When it comes to food, the world needs alternatives. Community supported agriculture (CSA) is one alternative. In the countryside around Chiang Mai, as with most places in the world, farmers are working hard but not breaking even. Food consumers get cheap food, but worry about the safety and quality of the food they buy. CSA tries to address both problems by directly linking farmers with consumers.
Fair Earth Farm is a small natural farm located in Mae Rim District, about 20 km north of downtown Chiang Mai. We are an integrated farm, growing grain, vegetables, fruit, eggs, fish and a wide range of agroforest products and indigenous herbs. We began operation in 2007 and formally launched the CSA in December 2009 with funding support from the U.S. State Department.
The systems of CSA that have emerged in Japan, Europe and North America essentially seek to knock links out of the modern food chain, reconnecting food eaters and food growers. In most CSA schemes, there is a direct contractual relationship between a farm operation and a group of consumers. The consumers pay a certain amount of money at the beginning of the season – for a CSA share – and in return receive a basket of produce each week throughout the growing season.
Fair Earth Farm CSA will be more than a direct marketing arrangement. The farm will serve as a bridge between conscious urban consumers and struggling local farmers…
A matter of growing concern in the West is the emergence of “industrial organic,” or a food system that in most respects mirrors the non-organic industrial food system. This “organic” food system provides most of America’s lettuce from a single company in California. Carrots and asparagus rocket around the world. The typical Swedish breakfast has traveled the circumference of the earth to reach the table. Monocultured, mechanized, transported around the world, both systems are, in the words of Michael Pollan, “floating on a sinking sea of petroleum.” Sure, it’s all “certified,” which is fine if you want to put your trust in the bureaucrats and their laws. In most places, including here in Thailand, such things have never historically earned either trust or respect.
An alternative to petroleum-based breakfast and state-certified “trust” is a visit to the farm. Drive out — you’re driving around anyway, right? What’s an extra few miles? Carpool, even better. It’s nice out here in the countryside. Let us emphasize this point: to be a CSA member, you have to come out to the farm. Some weeks you might want to make a pick-up in town. Some weeks we’ll drop by your house for a talk about corn or kids or corruption or whatever, and leave you a basket. But you’ve got to know the farm. You’ve got to feel the soil, breathe the air. You’ve got to take an active interest in how the plants are being grown and the animals raised. Otherwise, why bother? Just go to the supermarket and spin the wheel. You’ll probably be okay.
But the farmers won’t be okay. Farming communities in Thailand are in crisis. Debt from chemically dependent monocropping has pushed the small farmer to the wall. Two of our neighbors have recently sold their land to pay off their debts. Now they have no land, no money, and a labor market that will eat them up for 200 baht a day. CSA is an alternative to that. You reach out to the farmer and make them a deal: farmer friend, you steward the land responsibly, recover the ecosystem, produce for us safe and healthy food that we can see growing with our own eyes — and help grow with our own hands, if we’re in the mood — and in return we’ll give you a fair deal, somewhere in between the depressed prices at the local market and the inflated prices at the boutique store where our trendy organic consumers tend to spend.
In this respect, the Fair Earth Farm CSA will be more than a direct marketing arrangement. The farm will serve as a bridge between conscious urban consumers – who want their food purchases to make a positive difference in society – and struggling local farmers who are trying to maintain natural farming systems or convert from chemically dependent agriculture. We work with farmers in our immediate neighborhood and elsewhere in northern Thailand. Please read on about some of our friends and opportunities to get involved.
