Rural youth start CSA connection with Chiang Mai city

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.

A recent Fair Earth Farm initiatives was to help certified organic farmers of  the Mae Tha Cooperative to find subscribers for a community supported agriculture network. Five farming families are now directly connected with 30 Chiang Mai consumer families, delivering weekly boxes of healthy natural food. The CSA is now accepting new members. Contact us here to get a box of fresh organic produce every week, meet members of the network and learn more about local natural food here and here.

The Mae Tha Cooperative is one of Thailand’s preeminent organic groups, and one of the engines behind the JJ organic market in Chiang Mai. (The market is organized by the Institute for Sustainable Agricultural Communities, or ISAC. Have a look at the video here.) Mae Tha is a small, scenic valley just to the east of the Ping River Valley, which includes Chiang Mai city.

Youth from the Mae Tha group have been doing their own experiments with community supported agriculture. Fair Earth Farm is one of the CSA subscribers — and cheerleaders — as well as acting on a temporary basis as an advisor in strategy, logistics and communications. Keep tuned for more information and opportunities to be involved.

Background

One way to reconnect farmers and consumers is community supported agriculture. We began farming at Fair Earth in 2007 and began research into CSA in December 2009 with funding support from the U.S. State Department. (See here for US Dept. of Agriculture’s support for alternative farming.) Helping the Mae Tha Coop to connect with Chiang Mai families is one of several positive outcomes of this project.

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.

CSA is more than just a direct marketing arrangement: It can serve as a bridge between conscious urban consumers and committed 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 know the farmers. 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 farmers and their land. 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 150 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 a CSA is  more than a direct marketing arrangement. It can 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 explore this website to learn about some of our friends and opportunities to get involved.

Markets for food from sustainable farming systems are growing around the world[i], including in northern Thailand. Despite their potential, however, linkages between environmentally conscious food consumers and farmers in Thailand are poorly developed. In the West and Japan, community supported agriculture schemes (CSA) are mushrooming across the land to establish just these linkages. CSAs directly connect farms and consumers to ensure the vitality of family farms, environmental protection and healthy food.

Only one other CSA exists in Thailand. The first, begun by Payong and Raweewan Srithong, links eight farming families in Kanchanaburi with more than 80 consumer families in Bangkok.

Fair Earth Farm spent most of 2010 doing a feasibility study of CSA in the Chiang Mai area of northern Thailand with funding from the US State Department, an effort to connect a group of urban consumers with farmers in rural villages.

The idea

An overarching goal of the CSA network is to demonstrate to both consumers and small farmers the potential of markets for environmentally sustainable farm products in northern Thailand.

The immediate objective of the project is to help organize and sustain a community supported agriculture (CSA) network in Chiang Mai Province that links environmentally concerned urban food consumers with existing and potential natural farmers in the surrounding countryside. The project addresses several key societal concerns, namely biodiversity conservation, climate change adaptation and mitigation, and development of clean technologies. These are addressed through the promotion of proven sustainable farming methods that conserve and enhance biodiversity – especially soil fauna and flora – reduce dependence on fossil fuel-based farm inputs, and substitute polluting technologies and practices with environmentally friendly ones. This is done in many ways, including the use of green manures and cover crops; integration among tree crops, annual crops, livestock and fish; and an emphasis on local foods for local markets. Many of these methods are currently practiced by farmers in the target areas.

Background

Many urban food consumers are concerned about the quality of the food they eat, feeling a disconnection between their food and the place where it is produced[ii].  This in part explains the rise of the organic food movement[iii]. Meanwhile, small farmers continue to suffer a variety of pressures on their livelihoods, including debt, health problems related to the use of agricultural chemicals, and unstable commodity markets[iv]. Consumers want a greater sense of confidence in the quality of the food they consume and producers need a better deal from the food they grow.

Beyond the immediate question of family health, some consumers are motivated by ethical considerations about food. These include concerns about:`

• the impacts of food production on the environment, including worries about biodiversity decline, climate change, and watershed contamination;
• inhumane animal rearing in factory farms;
• the wellbeing of small farmers and traditional ways of rural life;
• preserving green spaces around cities for aesthetic reasons;
• preserving and recovering agro-biodiversity, or the variety of local crop and livestock varieties;
• harmful trends in diet of modern societies

Meanwhile, much of both lowland and upland agriculture in northern Thailand has serious negative consequences for forests, water and biodiversity. It has also led to significant social problems, like exposure to toxic chemicals and debt. In response, many organizations propose alternative agricultural practices more in line with natural processes. These practices go by many names – organic farming, permaculture, and conservation farming. In this project we use the term natural farming. Innovative programs of natural farming have been spearheaded by several NGOs and other organizations in northern Thailand. ISAC, mentioned above, has helped several hundred farming families to adapt organic farming techniques and connect with local markets. It has also helped set up an affordable organic certification system that is friendly to small farmers. This is the Northern Organic Standards Organization (NOSO).

An innovative and fast-growing alternative to harmful trends in farming in northern Thailand is a movement toward local food systems. Several innovations have emerged in Chiang Mai city in recent years, including alternative markets selling products under various labels such as “organic,” “sustainable,” “pesticide-free,” etc.[v] In North America, the EU and Japan, a rapidly growing phenomenon goes by the name of CSA, or community supported agriculture[vi]. There are many definitions of CSA[vii], but the idea essentially seeks to knock links out of the modern food supply 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 and in return receive a basket of produce each week throughout the growing season. Chemical-free and other more natural farming methods are implied in CSA, though strict adherence to state or other certification schemes is not. By directly linking urban consumers and peri-urban or rural producers – either through direct consumer harvesting, farm pick-ups or local networks – CSAs reduce the need for costly and technical organic certification. Consumers can see for themselves how their food is produced, and sometimes even take part in the production. Farmers gain security by contracting with a network of consumers who promise to buy produce for the season, often at guaranteed prices.

In northern Thailand, several organizations[viii] have helped organize twice-weekly markets in Chiang Mai where members of farming cooperatives from the area can sell organic or pesticide-reduced produce, usually for prices consistent with general markets. These markets are welcome alternatives in Chiang Mai, but are still quite under-developed in terms of promotions and advertising. For example, the rapidly growing expatriate community seems to be largely ignorant of their existence. In terminology familiar to the organics movement, these would be considered “farmers’ markets,” rather than CSA. The farms are far enough away from the city (around two hours) to make them inconvenient for consumer visits. The consumers can buy directly from the farmers at the markets, but do not have personal experience with the farms themselves. And the idea of a “community of individuals who pledge support for a (specific) farm operation”[ix] is absent from the system.

The creation of a CSA in northern Thailand will be a novel and, it is hoped, trendsetting enterprise that could simultaneously further environmentally responsible land stewardship, economically viable small farms and healthy food consumers.

[ii] “In 1993, a Swedish researcher calculated that the ingredients of a typical Swedish breakfast — apple, bread, butter, cheese, coffee, cream, orange juice, sugar — traveled a distance equal to the circumference of the Earth before reaching the Scandinavian table.” See Worldwatch: http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6064

[iii] See Conford, 2001. “The Origins of the Organic Movement.” Edinburgh: Floris Books.

[iv] For information on the specific problems faced by the upland study village in this project, see http://uhdp.org/Condition.html.

[v] For a list of markets operated in Northern Thailand by the Institute for Sustainable Agricultural Communities (ISAC), see http://www.intracen.org/Organics/Country-Profile-Thailand.htm

[vi] The CSA idea originated simultaneously in Japan and Germany in the 1960s. The first CSA in the USA started in 1985. By 2006 there were 1,500 operating across the country. (McKibben, 2007. “Deep Economy.” New York: Times Books; pg. 81).

[vii] One definition, from http://localfoods.about.com/od/localfoodsglossary/g/csa_glossary.htm: “Community-supported agriculture (CSA) is a food production and distribution system that directly connects farmers and consumers. Consumers buy “shares” in a farm’s harvest in advance.” Because this is a research project, the consumers will not be required to buy shares in advance in the first year of operation. See part e (methods) for elaboration.

[viii]The Institute for Sustainable Agricultural Communities (ISAC) and the Chiang Mai University Multi-cropping Center are two such organizations.

[ix] http://www.geocities.com/rainforest/7813/c_umass.htm

[x] For a report on the history of the target upland villager, see http://www.statelessperson.com/www/?q=node/685

[xi] See www.uhdp.org

[xii] For a slide show of UHDP’s work, see http://www.danieljpowell.com/uhdp_evaluation

[xiii] For a list of the indigenous agroforest products promoted by UHDP, see http://uhdp.org/Doc/Agroforestry-English-web.pdf, pg. 40.