The original CSA model was a truly shared risk venture where the member families signed on and prepaid for the season, for the produce the farmer was able and choese to grow. They received what was ready each week and accepted any crop failures that happened. It helped the farmer with an up front cash flow, and a prepaid crop.

Many other slightly different models exist including ones wher the consumer member pays ups front gets some choice in what they get each week ranging from a couple of choices to complete choice where there is a price for each item. When they have used up the prepaid amount, they pay more to continue. This is not shared risk at all, but a guaranteed purchase arrangement. These models can have added paperwork associated with them depending on how the ordering or choices are handled. Email can facilitate this if all your customers are online.

CSA's often fall into the category of relationship marketing - ie personal contact between the member and the farmer is important to building a relationship that creates loyalty and flexibility in your customer group. If this is fostered, often members will volunteer to do various organizational jobs (and sometimes gardening jobs) for the CSA. There is a good discussion of this and the possible role of a core group in Elizabeth Henderson's book, Sharing the Harvest.

Plan ahead before you start up a Community Supported Agriculture CSA project on your farm. It's easier to add features later than take them away after people get used to them and expect them. The time spent considering the following questions - even before you start looking at catalogs or think about soil requirements, will help you design features which meet your personal preferences and your definition of quality of life and manageable farm workload. Among the design features are the vegetables that you grow, what days are pickup days, the sizes and types of shares, and how much the members should or will participate.

Every CSA is different, and there is no right or wrong, but most have traditionally provided the consumer with just the vegetables that they would eat fresh that week.

1. Who is the target audience and who don't you want?

Seniors may not buy as much but be flexible timewise. You may need patience, more time and more attention to safety issues such as ponds, play equipment or dogs for families with young children who like visiting the CSA if it has something they can do or has animals. Professionals may want trendy vegetables & fresh herbs and a quick, convenient pick up system but don't like weekend pickups. Vegetarians may prefer larger than normal amounts. Organic enthusiasts want year round vegetables with an emphasis on the organic certification.

2.What could you do to increase your appeal to your target group and can you manage the extra work?

This may not be something you want to do in the startup phase but options include cut-your-own fresh herbs or flowers, animals which need daily or twice daily attention or an on-farm store which may mean dealing with zoning or health agencies. Canning or freezers shares with bulk amounts may be an option.

3. Are you going to deliver the shares or have members come to the farm?

If delivering, considerations include type of vehicle and packing as the shares can be bulky, whether you deliver to individual homes, to a drop-off point such as a member's home or certain areas but not others, the costs for gas, vehicle and its maintenance, your time and effort, recompensing members for being the drop-off point or staffing a pick-up point, for example public places such as parking lots.

If pickup, you may need to consider how far people are prepared to drive and options to encouraging them such as carpools. Physical facilities such as restrooms and parking may be needed as well as staffing on pickup days to answer questions and deal with problems. If you don't like to have so much contact with the members, your plan needs to identify who will do this.

Presorting requires more time, more containers, gives members less choice but increases accuracy and allows for protecting the more perishable food such as greens with ice packs or refrigeration. Member sorting may lead to mistakes in weighing with shortfalls for later arriving members.

4. What size and type of shares are you going to offer?

This will affect your garden plan as well as recordkeeping and paperwork. Options are one size fits all so single people will have to find a partner, shares to suit the needs such as family shares, single person shares and vegetarian shares, or seasonal shares such as early, midsummer, fall or winter.

Nobody can work non-stop for twelve months and sustain it so plan your production schedule to include some down time for you.

5. How will you deal with the uncertainty of the harvest?

Very few vegetables can be "held over" for more month than a day or two without a fairly sophisicated and sizable cold storage-a major capital expense. And it's impossible to predict, despite the stating of days to maturity listing in the catalogs, exactly how long it will take to be ready for harvest. So you have to be flexible and keep up on top of how the different vegetables are growing. Succession planting is critical to have continuous supply of salad greens especially.

6. When will the harvest and pick-up days be?

Figuring out which days work best for your situation and your CSA membership is important. Lots of people like to have weekends free so a midweek pickup is often popular, if pickup is after normal business hours.

Two days a week for pickup spaced as far apart in the week as possible are most common (ie Tuesday or Wednesday and Friday or Saturday). In my experience, vegetables such as peas, beans and corn require picking at least 3 times a week a Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday harvest would be preferable. You wouldn't have to have CSA pickups all three days but could harvest for some other sale situation, like a farmers market, wholesale, or bulk sales for canning or freezing are some possibilities.

7. What happens to missed pickups?

You need to plan whether you will give a discount to members away on vacation, whether you will hold for a day if the person is unable to come that day, or call to remind those who forget to pickup.

8. How much other flexibility will you accommodate?

Inevitably there will be members who are always asking for favours or exceptions such as the one who doesn't want broccoli and wants something else instead. They can drive you crazy. These situations (and others!!!) should be thought through and clearly communicated (in writing) to new members. If you do make exceptions, it is best to cover yourself by saying something like, I can't always do this.. or This is a one time only. There is always the temptation to try and accommodate everyone to make them happy, but remember if you are planning (hoping) to grow, that the kind of flexibility you can do for a 20 family CSA, is impossible for a 100 family CSA and if you are at first accommodating and later become rigid you may alienate your original members.

Fran McQuail