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Chemicals, hormones and pesticides. Sound yummy? These are all things that can be found in regular food. Michel Nischan breaks down the principles of organically grown food and why it's better for your health.

What is Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)?

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms provide a weekly delivery of sustainably grown produce to consumers during the growing season (approximately June to October). Those consumers, in turn, pay a subscription fee. But CSA consumers don’t so much “buy” food from particular farms as become “members” of those farms. CSA operations provide more than just food; they offer ways for eaters to become involved in the ecological and human community that supports the farm.

What does CSA membership involve?

Membership arrangements vary among farms. For instance, some CSA operations deliver their food to the neighborhoods where members live, while others arrange for members to come to the farm and help make deliveries. Some CSA farms expect members to work on the farm at least once during the season while others only expect members to support the farm with their membership.

Most people will not be able to afford to pay someone to design, plant and develop a garden for them year round. I feel as though this is cheating somehow because when you think of a 'garden' or when I think of a garden, I imagine that it is maintained by the homeowner, that it is a personal connection between man and earth. But if you think about farms that sell their crops to stores or community supported agriculture, then this is not so far fetched. People who could afford it have always had personal gardeners.

July 22, 2008
A Locally Grown Diet With Fuss but No Muss
By KIM SEVERSON

Eating locally raised food is a growing trend. But who has time to get to the farmer’s market, let alone plant a garden?

That is where Trevor Paque comes in. For a fee, Mr. Paque, who lives in San Francisco, will build an organic garden in your backyard, weed it weekly and even harvest the bounty, gently placing a box of vegetables on the back porch when he leaves.

The Royal Horticulture Society (RHS), the UK's leading gardening charity, in their Conservation and Guidelines Series, has release a short six page PDF leaflet on Organic Gardening.

It provides a definition of organic gardening, stating that although "regarded as an alternative to gardening with chemicals, many organic techniques are simply good gardening practices." The guide further goes on to discuss why organic gardening should be practiced, noting that the side effects of commercial food growing has been poor soil structure, water purity and wildlife survival.