subject: Market Gardening The Csa Way [print this page] Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a a great way to begin gardening for money. In CSA market gardening, families essentially subscribe to your garden, to receive a weekly basket of fresh vegetables and sometimes other products. Here's 5 reasons why CSA the way to go for new growers.
CSA market gardening advantage 1: Guaranteed cash flow. In this model, the families that subscribe to your farm often pay you in advance to receive a share of the goodies from your market garden for the season. This early cash flow lets you buy equipment and seed, and launch your season with very little start-up capital of your own.
CSA market gardening advantage 2: A locked in customer base. Because you have signed up your customers for the season, you don't have to worry about price competition from other growers. Growers that sell at farmers markets often face price erosion as the season goes on. For example, let's say one of your market gardening competitors has a surplus of cucumbers, and begins to sell them for half the price you do. You can match his price and lose your profit, or don't match it and lose customers. With a Community Supported Agriculture your price and profit are locked in.
CSA market gardening advantage 3: The ability to plan production. This is an incredibly powerful advantage to this model of market gardening. Because you know how many customers you have before the season starts, you can plan precisely how much you need to grow to meet their needs. And this is turn lets you plan space in your market garden and greenhouse, and how much labour you will need to deliver your crop.
For example, if you have 50 customers that each want one head of cabbage each week, you know you need to be able to harvest at least this many heads of cabbage to meet their needs. And since each cabbage plant will require about 2 square feet in your garden, you know you will need to allow for 100 square feet cabbage bed to be available each week. To continue the example, if you plan to deliver cabbage for 10 weeks, then you know you will need a total of 500 cabbages, and 1000 square feet of garden space for this crop. You can do the same analysis for each crop you grow to plan your entire market garden.
CSA market gardening advantage 4: No wastage. One of the problems with selling at a farmers market is, you are never sure what is going to sell on that particular that day. One day you might sell out of tomatoes by 9 a.m. but bring 50 lbs of unsold cabbage home. The next market day, the situation might be the other way around. This leads to wastage and lost sales. Fresh vegetables are a perishable item, if you can't sell them soon after harvest, they are wasted.
With a Community Supported Agriculture, things are different. Everything you harvest from your garden is delivered to your customers. Each delivery day you pick the vegetables that are ripe and ready, and bring them to your customers in optimum condition. No lost sales and no wastage.
CSA market gardening advantage 5: Adjusting to demand. If you are selling at a farmers market, and you have a couple items that are hot sellers, you are faced with a problem. The problem is, since the season is well under way it is just about impossible to ramp up quickly enough to grow more of the popular item. This is a lost sales opportunity.
In contrast, with a CSA you meet with each family customer before the season starts. You can find out their preferences for vegetables. Then you can adjust your growing plans to grow more of the vegetables everyone wants, and fewer of the less popular one. This custom growing means less work for you, and more satisfaction for your customers.
In summary, all these advantages make CSA market gardening the way to go for new market growers. Consider Community Supported Agriculture for more market gardening success.
