Welcome to Regeneration CSA

Here is a little note in which we will try to share some things about the direction we want to go as a CSA, as farmers, and as people.

We are really grateful for the experience we have gained over the last three years and the connections we have made with the local community. We are especially grateful to the owner of the land we are farming on, Toby Stover, whose has been a great friend to us, and a great supporter of the CSA community. She is a wonderful person, and we couldn’t want a more friendly environment to farm and live on.  

We are though, working towards a future for the CSA that goes beyond this piece of land. Though it is a beautiful spot, it is not ideally suited to the kind of farming we need to do to become sustainable as a CSA.

WHAT IS OUR PERSPECTIVE ON FARMING?

   Choosing to grow food within a CSA is more than just a “business” model for us. We see being part of the growing sustainable community-based food movement as a central part of our work, and part of our core values that keeps us motivated.
   We strive to embody, as best we can, a holistic approach to our farming practices, our community relationships, our ecological relationships, as well as our own personal desire for happiness, security, and meaning in our lives.

  So,  “what is the community-based food movement?” you might ask.  Well, it really goes to the heart of what we are as a community, the choices we make as individuals, and is arguably central to questions as deep as whether we even survive as a species on this planet.   It is about the interconnectedness of the big important stuff that comes together in how and what we choose to eat.

OK, in case you are a bit skeptical we’ll start with the scary stuff which we hope you all are already aware of anyway, though the terrible mess we have ourselves in with our current food system can hardly be adequately described, esp in a short blog post.:  

Climate Change: 

   Industrial agriculture (including much “Organic” production) is the largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions of any industry. This occurs thru the direct use of fossil fuels for transportation, energy, fertilizer, and pesticide, and well as methane and nitrous oxide production from feedlot animal production and other farm activities.  It is estimated that there are on average ten calories of fossil fuel energy used to create one calorie of food energy that we consume here in the US.

   Greenhouse gas in the atmosphere also comes from tillage of the soil. The relationship of soil carbon to greenhouse gas emissions is left out of most calculations, and this is why you won’t always see agriculture as the top of the list in greenhouse gasses. However you count it up though, if we don’t change the way we feed ourselves, little else will matter in terms greenhouse gas reduction. 
 
   And the damage being done by industrial farming methods goes beyond climate change, and includes: topsoil loss and depletion (this is huge), waterway and ocean habitat destruction, (hypoxic zones across the globe from agricultural runoff) the loss of fossil aquifers (will future wars be about water?) and much more.  

Food Security and Food Justice:  

  For most of us on the planet; rich, poor, and in between- our access to good food is neither just, nor secure.

  We have a "globalized" food system, and yet  one billion people are lacking adequate nutrition, and tens of millions starve to death each year.  There are also a billion people who are overweight, including 60% of us in the US, the highest percentage of any nation.  And yet still we have millions of people in this country without access to healthy, affordable, nutrient rich food in their local community. 

   Billions of dollars go into a health care system to treat chronic disease that are preventable with a good diet.

  There are 75 million people in the NE United States, and if we are all going to eat more locally, we need ten times the farmers on the ground that we have now. (The good news they are out there; young people with a passion to farm, and want to be in the local food business for all the right reasons!)

  Healthy, local food cannot just be something the most privileged in our society can afford to eat if we are to create a sustainable future for ourselves.  

Food Sovereignty: 

  This is a complicated way of saying that for people to address all of the above problems, they need to have some measure of control over the food resources in their local  community. 

  This could mean access to land for community gardens and new farmers, this could mean a say over the food that is served to their children in school, it could mean some type of control over the food that is brought into their communities by corporations and global treaties,…it can mean a lot of things, but is again a central part of any secure, sustainable food system.

LOCAL SOLUTIONS:

  OK, so where does our humble little CSA, our extended community, and we as farmers fit into all this?

  Well, we want to be part of addressing all of the above, and more if we can, in a local way.
 
  We want to do more than just grow food as a commodity to sell to “consumers” for top dollar, and we want to be part of a system that is providing food for all of our neighbors and community that wants it- not just the most privileged among us.  Up to now we have done this through an open sliding scale approach, and we are committed to this in the future.

  We want to grow food in a way that is healthiest for us as growers, healthiest for the people who eat the food we grow, healthiest for the soils we grow on, and that (we hope) are effective in remediating and regenerating the damage we have done to our ecology with our societies past (and current) damaging practices. Regenerative, Permaculture based farming practices are key to this.

  We want to help develop a CSA model (there are many good ones out there already to look at) that can be replicable, and that other young growers and other communities can take the best from as they seek to create and expand their own sustainable food systems.  Land tenure is a key aspect of this. We can’t create a healthy, affordable local food system without a healthy relationship to our communities farmland.

OUR GOALS:

  We are looking for another piece of land to grow and live on.   We are open to, and looking at various options and land tenure models, but we feel that in the long run what we all need are community supported land tenure models to grow the community sustainable nourishing, affordable food.

  The current speculative market on land is arguably the largest barrier to rebuilding a safe, sustainable local food system. The “market value” of land in the Hudson Valley is far beyond its agricultural carrying capacity. This means that no matter how talented, how creative, how hard working, and how market savvy our regions new farmers are (and they are all of the above) they cannot grow enough food on a given piece of land to service their debt if they were to purchase it at market value.  This is self evident all around us; new farmers without access to land while estate buyers, and second (or third or fifth) homes all around.  This is not just a problem for new farmers, this is a danger to all of our long term food security.  


  We will never be able to have an affordable, sustainable, healthy local food supply unless we have affordable access to land for new farmers. 

  So, while we are remaining open to various opportunities for Regeneration CSA, our ideal future would be as a pilot project for a new non-profit: The Hudson Valley Community and Agricultural Land Trust.  www.HVCALT.org