Wonka’s Harvest has just four acres of fields and greenhouses, yet Patty Grimmer and her farm staff grow a lot of produce in the small area.
Grimmer now sells to restaurants, grocery stores and farmers markets in southern Wisconsin. But when she first got started in 2020, she relied on her community-supported agriculture, or CSA, program.
The model, which first took off among Midwest farms in the 1990s, allows people to support a local farm by paying upfront for a season's worth of produce, delivered to them in weekly boxes from late spring to early fall.
"It's an easy avenue for getting some capital up front," Grimmer said. "People sign up for CSA, you know, in January, February or March when we need the capital to buy seeds, buy soil."
But Grimmer, who has a background working in food accessibility, knew she wanted to operate her CSA differently in order to reach younger and less affluent consumers.
She gives customers the option to pay for their CSA box weekly, and uses a "pay what you can" pricing scale. Members can also sign up for as little as four weeks if committing to a whole season feels like too much.
A growing number of farms are changing the traditional CSA model to offer more flexible buying options.
Grimmer said the update is necessary to keep up with how today's consumers want to shop in an era of convenience and choice.
"You can get your groceries delivered to you in a matter of hours while you sit on your couch and pick what you want to pick," she said. "I think that in order to tailor to a new market, you can't just say, 'Oh, a young person is going to want to be a devout CSA member and eat radishes for 20 weeks long.'"
Consumer preferences offer new opportunities
Today's CSA varies a lot from farm to farm. Online platforms make it easier for members to customize what comes in their weekly box and for producers to process more frequent payments.
Some farms have shifted entirely to embrace a credit system, where members purchase credits at the start of the year and decide when they want to place orders throughout the season.
Many CSA farms now hope to offer customers a box that's similar to their weekly grocery shop. Producers partner with other local farms to sell meat, eggs or other products in one large box.
Sadie Willis is the network manager at FairShare CSA Coalition, a non-profit that helps connect farms with consumers to build a stronger local food network. The recent shift has led CSA to be a more transactional relationship than it was in the past, she said. Customers view it primarily as a way to get local food, rather than their pledge of support for a local farm.
But Willis said farms that have embraced flexibility still identify as being community-supported.
"They really wouldn't be able to exist and market their produce in this way if they didn't have a robust set of loyal customers who are with the farm through thick and thin, even if those customers are saying, 'Hey, I want to pick up my box at my local brewery instead of having to drive over to your farm to get it.' Or 'I don't like kohlrabi, can you give me more spinach instead?'" she said.
Consumers are also increasingly interested in health and wellness. The trend is driving major food companies to market products as high protein or minimally processed. And Willis said it could be an opportunity for CSAs, which are often using organic or environment-friendly practices.
"People are more than ever curious about what's in their food, where it came from, how it was grown and processed, or not processed at all, and they really want to focus on aligning their finances with well-being for their families," she said.
But some long-time CSA supporters worry that the push to offer consumers more choice is moving the model away from what it was originally intended to do for farms.
John Hendrickson is a farm viability specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems. But back in the early ‘90s, he was a graduate student at the university and was passionate about how the CSA model could help farms in his area thrive.
Hendrickson said CSA, which is inspired by similar models in Japan and Europe, was meant for customers to take on some of the risk that comes with putting seeds into the ground each year. But after three decades, Hendrickson said CSA farmers know that doesn't work for every consumer.
"If the farm had a bad year and there were not as many tomatoes, then people got less tomatoes," he said. "Most consumers are not in a position to roll the dice in terms of their food budget, right? So that has really kind of fallen by the wayside."
He said from the beginning, the American version of CSA has required more customer service from farms than selling in bulk or operating a market stand. Giving members the opportunity to customize their weekly box could create even more administrative work, Hendrickson said, which cuts into time farmers can spend in their fields.
A more cautious take on flexibility
These concerns are why some CSA farmers are taking a more conservative approach to offering flexibility to customers.
Liz Graznak, owner of Happy Hollow Farm in central Missouri, said the COVID-19 pandemic pushed her to change her CSA program, which she's operated for 16 years. She stopped requiring CSA members to volunteer on her farm and shifted to hiring more full-time staff, which helped her farm grow.
Graznak said new online ordering platforms have made it easy for her to offer customers the option to pay month-to-month instead of a lump sum upfront. She also lets her members tweak their weekly box when she has an abundance of a certain vegetable.
But Graznak said she does not let customers cancel their membership mid-season, and she's not interested in becoming any more like a subscription service.
"That does not fit what CSA is," she said. "For me, CSA embodies eating seasonally, supporting the farm that is feeding you, and you know, I'm not Amazon."
She thinks farmers have to find the right balance between bringing in new customers and staying true to the point of community-supported farming.
This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.
