Subscription Farming

Description

John Robb:

"In addition to entrepreneurial mini-farms, local farming can also be supported through subscriptions (aka Community Supported Agriculture). These subscriptions entitle the buyer to weekly deliveries/pick-ups of fresh produce. Subscription farming grew from 50 farms in 1990 to over 2000 today.

What makes this interesting to our exploration of community resilience is:

• Subscription farming (like mini-farming on small plots) spreads the risks (if you know farming, then you know that it is a VERY risky business) among participants and smoothes cash flows.

• It's a model that communities can implement on arable public land, where the rent for the land is provided as a share of the crop to the community.

• If you combine both models (subscription and mini-farms), you can develop hybrid models where individuals rent/manage small plots on a larger parcel and purchase services (from weed/pest control to tilling) from the land's manager."

(http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2008/09/journal-subscri.html)