Hurricane
Irene provided a wonderful Home Depot Holiday for New York City residents. In my tiny square of the city, the storm did
none so much as lift a trash can, but not everywhere on the East Coast fared so
lucky. A mere two block stroll from my
apartment, giant trees were torn from the ground. Along the waterway there were uprooted trees, as
well, harming no one but providing some fun balance beams for exploration of
the damage in the days after. Many lost
power in the outer boroughs. The worst
hit though, by far, were many farmers upstate.
Farmers’ land was immersed, worst in the days after Irene, with the
swells that followed in her wake. Land
was covered in water, washing away the crops that grow above the earth, and
rotting the ones that grow beneath her protection. My Community Supported Agriculture farmer
lost 95% of his crops, debilitating him.
He has nothing to sell at the farmer’s market but owes for the farmer’s
market selling space regardless and can no longer continue his CSA members’
weekly shares in full. In addition to
paying for many repairs, he needed to purchase seeds for quick growing crops to
plant now in order to have something to sell in the fall. After his entire spring and summer of
work—preparing, planting, tending—he must back trace and redo every step. Worse, no matter how hard he works, he
cannot change time: he still must wait
months from now for any new crops to be ready to to harvest and sell. For him, this means he will lose two months
at the farmer’s market, and when he returns he will have a very limited variety,
mainly greens. For us CSA members, this
means weeks without food, and no squash, no sweet potatoes (!!!! L), no more tomatoes, no
more peaches…no end of the summer or fall vegetables.
Amid a sea of green from the storm winds.
Battling on a felled tree...with a felled tree.
The one New York City casualty of Irene.
But this is what a CSA is,
right? It’s time to put our money where
our mouths are! On paper, I love the
idea of a Community Supported Agriculture.
We share risk, we support a local farmer, and we get the freshest of the
freshest food. But when things go wrong,
sharing the risk means actually
sharing the risk!! We paid one lump fee
for what we assumed would be the entire summer, and it turns out we will only
receive half of what we had originally expected. So how are CSA members taking the lousy
news? Well, after having paid for 28 weeks
of produce that we will never receive…we have raised $1,500 of our own
additional money for the farmer to help him with expenses.
Woah—we did what? I’m impressed myself. Because we know our farmer directly, we could
not let him go under! We are scrounging
together extra money—even as we go to the grocery store and purchase our
produce to make up for what we lack—we are finding ways to give extra money to
the farm. I have given $20 each of the
past two weeks that I have gone to pick up my small share of leftover produce.
Just
Food is currently organizing to help the dozens of farmers who were
affected (http://justfood.org/ ), as
well. That said, our CSA’s ability to
organize to help our own farmer has been extremely impressive
I consider that way better than donating to save the
polar bears or fight hunger in Kenya.
Rather than through an organization—where frequently less than half of
the money given arrives to the ground where it is intended to go and where who
knows if the organization has the best intentions or knows what really is best
for the local community—100% of this money arrives to our farmer. And I am helping something local that I know is virtuous; I know because I live
here, I understand local circumstances, and thus I know how it affects my
community.
