Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in Norway - A ... - SIFO

1.4. What do shareholders pay for?At our recent seminar for the CSA pilot-farms 8 , an interesting discussion from BuschberghofCSA in Germany was referred by Wolfgang Stränz. The issue at stake was whether or notvegetarians should pay less than meat-eaters because they did not use any meat. From aproduct-point of view, this was of course true, but from other perspectives, the case mightlook differently. From a diet-point of view, the vegetarians did get their full diet covered in anequal manner as the meat-eaters. And from a point of view that the shareholders are payingfor the maintenance of the farming activity as such (they are passive farmers), it is beside thepoint what particular products they get from it. Another point is the interconnectedness(particularly in organic agriculture) between crop production and animal husbandry: also thecarrots have been produced with the application of manure.By the formulation we are all farmers , Stränz implicates that taking (co-) responsibility fora particular piece of land and the maintenance of a sound food production (on that site)qualifies for using the term. The active farmers are involved with the physical labour and takethe agronomic responsibility, while the passive farmers contribute economically by buying ashare. And then they don t count their carrots or litres of milk afterwards.At our CSA pilot-farms, there are some specific examples of common goods which couldbe regarded as worth paying for in a similarly unspecific way:1. At the urban farm close to Oslo, the issue of land protection has been on the agenda.Recently, surrounding farming areas have been converted into golf courses, andseveral of the citizens in the neighbourhood would rather keep these areas for foodproduction and keeping them accessible as traditional cultural landscapes.2. At one of the rural CSA, with cooperation between three organic farms, in situprotection and maintenance of grain genetic resources is highly relevant. At one of thefarms, there is production and research on rare varieties of grain, traditional to theNordic region. Making use of baking facilities at another of the farms involved, thereare plans for the development of particular recipes and baking of breads etc. with thesespecial types of grain. Bread is a type of commodity with potentially a very long andcomplex chain, and where the origins of the grain, as well as information about thegenetic variety may be obscured for the end-consumer. At the same time, the issue ofsecuring genetic diversity is very much on the agenda. Membership and responsibilityfor local food production might be a nice supplement to signing up for saving the rainforest.3. And as a more general concern, the offer of organic food in the general food market inNorway does not seem to satisfy the demand (neither in terms of volume nor in termsof product variety). In this regard, being a shareholder in any of the CSAs currentlystarting up means securing the production of organic food and even being given anopportunity to have a say in the types of food being produced.8 Fokhol Farm, February 16th2004, seminar about Community Supported Agriculture.4