Betting the farm on local markets.

Richard de Wilde and Linda Halley's lush seventy-acre farm is tucked into a valley in hilly southwestern Wisconsin. Unlike most farmers in America, they don't rely on one or two crops. They grow more than sixty.

They can afford this diversity because, in 1993, they were approached by the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition with a proposition: Take money up front from consumers at the start of the season, and in turn deliver produce to them on a weekly basis. They took the deal, and haven't looked back. Though they also sell wholesale and weekly at the Madison Farmer's Market, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) has become a big part of their business. Today, they deliver food to more than 500 members, placing them among the larger CSAs in the country.

According to John Hendrickson of the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems at University of Wisconsin-Madison, there are between 1,200 and 1,500 CSA farms in the U.S. CSAs exist in nearly every state, but are generally clustered in the Northeast, the West Coast, and the Upper Midwest. Hendrickson notes that the regions where CSAs flourish "overlap virtually directly with the states that were won by John Kerry in the last election," though he adds that CSA members are a politically diverse group: "Obtaining healthy food, knowing where it comes from, supporting a small-scale farmer and a local business speaks to people of many different political persuasions."

For Jen Mombrea of East Aurora, New York, membership in a CSA means she has a personal connection to the place her food comes from. "You can actually walk on the ground where it grows. You're in touch with your food source," says Mombrea, who is a member of Native Offerings Farm CSA, based in rural upstate New York.

Members of the Hepworth Farm, working with the Sixth Street Community Center CSA in the East Village of New York, often find themselves learning for the first time about issues facing farmers and rural people. In addition to receiving vegetables and fruit, the 100 members are offered information about the politics of food, and a chance to become part of a burgeoning political movement. The center also runs a program to give urban teenagers a chance to work on an organic farm and engages neighborhood residents in lobbying against genetically engineered foods.

"We want to bring some truth to this whole issue and organize people to reclaim an environment that can support local agriculture," says Howard Brandstein, executive director of Sixth Street.

CSA farmers also get the pleasure of knowing that they are helping to change the food system, albeit in a tiny and incremental way. Hendrickson identifies CSAs, along with the Slow Food movement, farmers' markets, and locally raised crops, as an "important point of resistance for the growing number of people that are dissatisfied with the distasteful offerings and disastrous impacts of the modern food system."

For Richard de Wilde, surveying the land around him, the chief reward comes in knowing that he has helped to physically change the land around him, adding nutrients to the rich, silty soil while protecting the quality of the water and encouraging diverse and healthy local wildlife. Reflecting on his role in shepherding this land, he asks, "How many people have the job satisfaction we have?"

Illustration by Leslie Lammle

Beth Lucht is a freelance writer based in Madison, Wisconsin.