About CSA

Community Supported Agriculture

We operate a member supported CSA where members get a regular basket of seasonal farm production. We grow in our urban farm in New Orleans and periodically at a farmstead in Mississippi. We also work with and aggregate from a a variety of farmers in our bio-region to bring a diverse and seasonal farm share to our members.

The Roots of CSA

The CSA has roots, we invite you to follow these links to read about the roots of the CSA in America and some farmers who inspire us.

Two New England farms, Indian Line Farm in Massachusetts and Temple-Wilton Community Farm in New Hampshire, have widely been credited with starting the CSA movement in America, said to have been inspired by European agricultural traditions. The farms, one white-owned and one member-owned, implemented their first farm share programs in 1986.

But the story of the CSA model actually begins decades earlier, in the 1960s and ‘70s, with a man named Booker T. Whatley. A Black horticulturist and agricultural professor …

“If you can’t or won’t observe the basic laws of horticulture, then forget it. Either do it right, or don’t do it at all, because the results just won’t be what you wanted. You’ll simply be wasting your time and money.” ~Booker T. Whatley

Find out more about The Godfather of CSA, Dr. Booker T. Whatley

Farmer’s Co-op

Ben Burkett is a fourth-generation farmer in Petal, Mississippi.

His family has been growing food on the same plot of land since 1889, when his great-grandfather received a homestead from the U.S. government just 24 years after the end of the Civil War. It was one of the first African American-owned farms in the state.

Since then, the farm has grown to roughly 320 acres… …In 2014, he won a James Beard Foundation award for his work to support family farming…

Ben Burkett often accompanies the Indian Springs Farmers Co-op at the Crescent City Farmers Market in New Orleans. Please see From the Ground Up: A Mississippi Farmer Shares his Perspective on Food and Climate