Getting their farm share
Did you know?
There are 13 community-supported agriculture farms in Clark County, where last year there were eight, and six years ago just one.
CSAs sell directly to customers, usually delivering a box of produce each week with the cost running from $400 to $1,000 for a season lasting 20 to 25 weeks.
To find local farms, visit
Local Harvest / Farmers Markets / Family Farms / CSA / Organic Food or smallfarms.wsu.edu.
JANET L. MATHEWS/The Columbian
Heidi Graves, 31, of Washougal, says her family hopes to save money this year by paying $500 to get a weekly share of a fruit and vegetable farm near Camas.
Friday, May 09, 2008
By MICHAEL ANDERSEN and DEAN BAKER, Columbian Staff Writers
As the winter wore on and their family’s bills for lettuce, apples and other fresh produce pushed beyond $50 a week, Heidi and Joseph Graves broke out their budget and made a surprising decision.
The surprise wasn’t that they were going to buy a weekly share of a little fruit and vegetable farm outside of Camas. The surprise was, they couldn’t afford not to.
“My goal is: no Safeway,” Heidi Graves, of Washougal, said this week. “We will make it happen one way or another.”
With their five children, the Graveses are hoping to get all their produce this summer from two sources: their own garden and 6 Acre Farm, one of Clark County’s growing cadre of postage-stamp-sized farms that sell produce directly to consumers.
As rising fuel prices and record-breaking droughts and floods have bred a crisis in the global food market, some of those farmers say they find themselves making an unexpected pitch to customers: They’re a bargain.
“CSAs were a growing movement before this,” said Anne Lawrence, owner of Storytree Farm in the Glenwood area. “But with food prices going up … it’s a good deal.”
Here’s how the share farms, called community-supported agriculture or CSAs, work: Customers pay between $400 and $1,000 for a guaranteed share of whatever the farm produces through the summer. The food comes once a week in a box or sack, usually for about 20 to 25 weeks.
For $500, the Graveses have bought one of the 12 shares offered by 6 Acre Farm, four miles from their home. They’ll pick up the share each Tuesday.
“It’s a chunk of money up front, but in the end we’re really saving money,” Heidi Graves said.
Scrambling for shares
Five new CSAs launched this year in Clark County, and most others expanded their production. But they can’t keep up with consumers.
“Money has come in the mail from people I’ve never met,” marveled Kate Rae of Battle Ground, owner of Red Basket Farm. She started selling $500 shares two years ago, mostly to acquaintances at first, and hasn’t raised prices since.
Paula Korell, who started 6 Acre Farm this year with her husband, Scott, said she was startled by the response after their Web site appeared on localharvest.org, a Web site that lists small farms. She hurried to post their information on the site by New Year’s Day.
“We were sold out within six weeks,” Korell said.
If you’re hoping to save money with a CSA, Rae said, there’s one rule: eat everything you get.
“I think we are a good buy, if the people use everything and don’t waste it,” Rae said.
If you can’t manage that, she said, you can probably get similar food for less at a farmers market.
Luisa DePaiva of Purple Rain Vineyard in Brush Prairie, one of the few CSAs that still had shares available, said she’s rolled out two new services this year: front-porch deliveries and installment plans. Both make things easier for consumers accustomed to grocery-store shopping.
Full shares of Purple Rain’s long 34-week season sell for $986. Half-shares go for $493.
Because CSAs are a tiny slice of the food market, supermarkets and natural food stores don’t see them as true competitors.
“They don’t do enough business to hurt the grocery retailer,” said Scott Kooistra of Vancouver, owner of the IGA store at St. Johns Boulevard and Fort Vancouver Way. “That is a specialty market.
The people there aren’t so much price shoppers as they are quality shoppers. They want the freshness, the local and quality and they are willing to pay a bit more.”
Whole Foods, the upscale market that emphasizes its own fresh and local produce, does see competition from CSA farms around the state.
“We definitely find that CSAs are competitive in terms of pricing,” said Vicki Foley, spokesman for Whole Foods in Seattle. But she said some farms’ food fails to meet Whole Foods’ quality standards.
A grocers’ spokesman said direct-to-consumer farms have a competitive advantage over grocers: they’re free from many regulations.
“They’re not policed like the industry is in terms of food safety and food handling,” said Joe Gilliam, president of the Northwest Grocery Association.
Farming prices rise
Like all farms, CSAs face rising costs.
“We have the highest minimum wage in the U.S.,” said Lyle Stanley, owner of Gee Creek Farm in Ridgefield. “It’s hard to compete with the largest producers in Mexico and California. Fuel is high.
Everything is high: compost, lime, manure. I just bought lime at $6 a 50-pound bag. It was $3 before.”
But CSAs are shielded from other factors driving this year’s food prices: chemical fertilizers and pesticides and shipping costs from California, Chile or China.
“When you buy it, it was harvested that morning,” said Brenda Millar-Stanton, who owns Rosemattel’s CSA near Battle Ground. “No miles on it. No chemicals.”
She estimates the weekly $20 to $25 worth of produce her 60 customers purchase probably would cost between $40 and $60 at a natural food store.
“My prices are 20 percent under quality food pricing,” she said. “At the peak of the season, when we have the bounty, our price is 50 percent less.”
This year, CSA subscribers have one more advantage: they locked in prices months ago, when farming costs were still lower.
Some CSA farmers said they don’t know what they’ll do about their prices next year as their cost of seed, soil amendments such as green sand, rock phosphate, bone meal, blood meal and lime continue to rise along with fuel.
Others said they’ll probably hike prices.
But any price rise they might make won’t be easy, said Nola McPherson of DanDee Farm Naturals.
“It’s difficult for us to raise our prices,” she said. “It’s not so hard for a store. They never have to meet their customer and look them in the eye.”
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Allright take your time 
That's something my brother or dad would do. Ha!
