Betting the farm on local markets.

• Author: Lucht, Beth
• Position: Community supported agriculture

Richard de Wilde and Linda Halley's lush seventy-acre farm is tucked into a valley in hilly southwestern Wisconsin. Unlike most farmers in America, they don't rely on one or two crops. They grow more than sixty.

They can afford this diversity because, in 1993, they were approached by the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition with a proposition: Take money up front from consumers at the start of the season, and in turn deliver produce to them on a weekly basis. They took the deal, and haven't looked back. Though they also sell wholesale and weekly at the Madison Farmer's Market, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) has become a big part of their business. Today, they deliver food to more than 500 members, placing them among the larger CSAs in the country.

According to John Hendrickson of the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems at University of Wisconsin-Madison, there are between 1,200 and 1,500 CSA farms in the U.S. CSAs exist in nearly every state, but are generally clustered in the Northeast, the West Coast, and the Upper Midwest. Hendrickson notes that the regions where CSAs flourish "overlap virtually directly with the states that were won by John Kerry in the last election," though he adds that CSA members are a politically diverse group: "Obtaining healthy food, knowing where it comes from, supporting a small-scale farmer and a local business speaks to people of many different political persuasions."

For Jen Mombrea of East Aurora, New York, membership in a CSA means she has a personal connection to the place her food comes from. "You can actually walk on the ground where it grows. You're in touch with your food source," says Mombrea, who is a member of Native Offerings Farm CSA, based in rural upstate New York.

Members of the Hepworth Farm, working with the Sixth Street Community Center CSA in the East Village of New York...