第18届国际有机农业大会CSA专题讨论内容
2014-09-20 18:56阅读：
TITLE: Community Supported Agriculture Around the
World
SUBTITLE: farmers and organizers of CSA
in three different countries will share experiences in adapting the
CSA concept to their particular cultural context.
Name: Speakers: Kiera Mulvey (US),
Danijel Balaban (Croatia) and Shi Yan (China). Moderator: Jocelyn
Parot (France).
Speakers' presentation:
Kiera Mulvey worked several years as the Executive Director
of the FairShare Coalition, the Community Supported Agriculture
network in Madison, Wisconsin; Danijel Balaban is a new farmer from
Croatia, who is trying to settle a CSA, and has been participating
in several peer-to-peer exchange programmes between CSA movements
in Europe;
Shi Yan is the co-founder of Shared Harvest, the second major
CSA experience in
Beijing, China. She is also the translator of Elizabeth Henderson’s
Sharing the Harvest, the famous handbook about CSA;
Jocelyn Parot is the General Secretary of Urgenci, the
international CSA network. He has been in charge of several
experience-sharing projects in Europe.
Summary:
The idea of Community Supported Agriculture hits a positive
chord with many farmers and even more locavores. So far,
there is no legal definition. The initiators in the US
wanted it that way so that each farm could use the basic concept in
site-specific manners. Recently, CSAs have been increasing
in number rapidly in the US, at least if you take the
self-proclaimed advertisements at face value. Even faster growth
has been happening in some European countries. Meanwhile
Urgenci and its allies have been spreading the word about CSA in
sixteen countries, in Eastern and Western Europe, in North Africa
and Asia, setting up face-to-face, farmer-to-farmer and consumer
meetings.
Background:
Community Supported Agriculture is often mentioned as the
missing part of the new distribution food systems. For example, the
Special Rapporteur of the United Nations on the Right to Food,
Olivier de Schutter, is specifically referring to the CSA model
when he is advocating the new alliances between producers
and consumers. De Schutter points out the necessity to give access
to market to family farmers with agroecological techniques.
Improving agroecological, sustainable techniques is not enough. A
new strategy to secure markets for small holders is also
necessary.
Main Chapter:
In this workshop, you will hear activists from three
different continents, USA, China and Europe talk about what they
think CSA means. Are there values or organizing principles that
unite CSAs across international boundaries. Or is CSA just
a trendy term for any box of local or not so local farm produce
sold to consumers? Can we speak of a worldwide CSA
movement?
In the US, where CSAs have been growing steadily since the
mid-1980s, the key issues that keep coming up in the 2010s sound
like the following questions: are local produce aggregators that
have no farm base part of this CSA ferment? If members do not share
the risk with the farmers, are farm based distribution schemes
really CSAs? Is it time for a legal definition? if so, who write it
and who should enforce it?
In China, the situation is rather different since Community
Supported Agriculture in its American definition is something
absolutely new. Shi Yan, who has a long experience in the 2 first
recognised CSA farms in Beijing area, will explain the large echo
of these nascent initiatives in the Chinese society and the
challenges for the next year of development.
Jocelyn Parot and Danijel Balaban will provide an
international and an European perspective on the CSA movements.
Urgenci (www.urgenci.net) with its allies has been instrumental in
offering a solid frame for face-to-face, farmers-to-farmers and
consumers’ meetings around the globe. The most extensive exchange
programs have been led in Europe: during the past 4 years, 70
missions and information tours have taken place in 20 different
countries. CSA stakeholders have been offered the opportunity to
travel abroad to share their experience: about 200 international
travels have been sponsored. These exchanges have been kept down to
earth: no less than 150 farms have been visited, and 700 local
farmers met. Apart from the popular success (nearly
2,700 consumers have taken part into the 76 public meetings
organized during the info tours), what are the results
of CSA promotion actions? What is to be learnt from these
multilateral peer –based exchanges? Local
stories are undeniably the core of the program. But is that all?
Urgenci missions also show that there is a common ground. Beyond
the cultural specificities, beyond the diversity of actions, can
one speak of a worldwide CSA movement?
Core Messages:
-
Community Supported
Agriculture is a tool to strengthen the position of small-scale
farmers in the food chain, to contribute to the realization of the
right to food in urban and rural communities and overall rural
development;
-
Community Supported
Agriculture is an universal but context –sensitive tool, that can
be adapted in highly diversified agricultural
landscapes;
-
A “normalisation” of
the CSA model is probably not needed at a global scale, but
locally/regionally action should be taken by regional CSA networks
to preserve the specificities of this contract –based direct
selling system.
Conclusions:
-
Innovative short-chain
distribution schemes like CSA can offer solutions to reenergise
organic farming and offer an alternative to industrial organic
production models;
-
The development of
Community Supported Agriculture is often a way to
support the rise of a new type of small scale,
sustainable, organic, GMO free, family farming, and foster a new «
peasantry »;
-
There is a need for a
reinforced international network of CSA movements, in order to make
the Community Supported Agriculture movement conscious of itself,
and of its own power and forces. There is a need to raise awareness
about the movement’s role at the crossroads between 3 larger
movements: the Food Sovereignty Movement, the Organic agriculture
movement and Solidarity –based Economy.
