What are the benefits of CSA membership for food insecure households?

Today marks the official launch of the final project report - “Accessible Veg: A pilot project  exploring the  barriers and benefits to CSA  memberships  for food-insecure  households”, at the Food in Communities conference at Yr Egin, the S4C headquarters in Carmarthen. It lays out the key learnings and findings from a six-month pilot project we took part in with TGrains, a research project on co-creating desirable regional socio-ecological food relationships for sustainable and healthy UK diets.

What is TGrains?

The food we eat often comes from abroad, imported through a global supply chain. The aim of TGrains’ research is to understand whether increasing the proportion of our diet that is regionally produced could improve health and sustainability. They consider in their research what each region could produce, what the relationships between consumers, retailers, and producers might look like, and how this could promote tasty, healthy, and more sustainable diets.

Funded by the ESRC IAA Impact fund from Cardiff University; Higher Education Impact Funding from University of the West of England; WWF Cymru and Food Sense Wales as part of Peas Please, the pilot ran from June until November 2021, through some of the harshest tests of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many families were experiencing food insecurity and severe financial challenges. We were already running a solidarity veg box scheme from the farm as a rapid response to COVID lockdowns, offering affordable veg boxes subsidised through fundraising within our CSA community. But through this collaboration with TGrains, we were able to offer 10 more households a free weekly CSA share of seasonal vegetables, in exchange in their participation in the study through food journals and waste recording.

Through relationships with third-sector organisations and our wider network of supporters, members and volunteers, we were able to reach out to people within a 10-mile radius experiencing food insecurity, and who hadn’t engaged with a veg box scheme before. We were amongst five other farms and food projects chosen to participate - Henbant Permaculture, Ash & Elm Horticulture, Slade Farm Organics, Splice Child and Family Project Ltd Charity and Siop Griffiths Cyf.

What Are the Barriers to Accessing Veg?

The report, released today, lays out the key findings - the barriers to accessing CSAs and fresh, seasonal vegetables, and some of the benefits and opportunities. It also highlighted some key policy recommendations for Welsh government. The positive outcome of the study was that it painted a realistic picture of the challenges, and the huge potential in the role CSA can take in supporting food security. Many spoke of feeling a part of something and a sense of community, and reported feelings of increased wellbeing and security knowing that they had a weekly share of vegetables arriving on their doorstep. Those that were able to engage fully and had the space to really embrace the opportunity, reported tangible and clear benefits. But the study did highlight significant challenges to rolling out accessible veg projects to the wider community, many of which we’d echo in our own experiences.

Here are some of the barriers to accessing CSA veg:

•  Lack of information, knowledge, and  confidence about using the vegetables. Key  barriers here included vegetables that were  unknown to participants and limited means to  cook vegetables, for example due to a lack of  appropriate kitchen utensils. 

•  Lack of transport to collect veg bags as a side  effect of poverty. A major underpinning factor  for food insecurity is poverty. Unsurprisingly,  this meant that participants had limited access  to individual transport, such as a car, and a high  awareness of fuel prices. 

•  Multi-layered problems around mental health  and other issues that are often related to  difficulties planning and cooking meals, collecting the veg bags and participating in this project (e.g.  doing the interviews).

You can read more about the findings in the report. I joined Dr Angelina Sanderson-Bellamy, project lead on the Accessible Veg pilot, on a panel at the Food in Communities Conference today, with the title ‘Transforming Policy Through Community Action and Local Leadership’. Through presentations and discussion, the panel considered how mobilising a good food movement, building connections, an opportunity to discuss place-based approaches; community resilience and food leadership.

This engaging one-day conference brought together food leaders from across Wales to connect with each other, to share experiences, and inspire change. The conference will include key note addresses, panel discussions and workshops to share best practice and inspire future collaboration, highlighting new opportunities for food leaders and partnerships across Wales.

Our learning from the pilot has been that the issue of how to see agroecological, local and sustainable veg in low-income household is far more complex than simply making the food cheaper. We think that there is a lot of work to be done in developing cooking skills and food literacy - and the confidence, time and resources to go with them! Several participants lacked either the cooking skills, equipment, resources - whether time, space, mental capacity or family support - and, in some cases, the will to cook with fresh, seasonal and occasionally unfamiliar vegetables. We all know how it is to be under pressure, trying to meet our responsibilities, balance work and family life and just get through the day - and how cheap, convenience food is all we can manage. Often, a box of seasonal, greens-filled veg was too much to think about for some of our families already juggling so much.

“We have an issue in our county with low income families not engaging with any cooking or vegetables at all. So I think more work is required in our area to engage people with how veg is grown and how to cook with it.”

Steffan Lemke-Elms, ‘Accessible Veg’ coordinator, Glasbren

How Have We Built Food Security Into Our CSA?

You’ll remember the scenes in supermarkets early in the pandemic as shelf emptied and hoarders cleared out the supplies in fear of what was to come. Supply chain issues also exposed how fragile our ‘just-in-time’ supermarket system is. Meanwhile, food bank use spiked, with unprecedented numbers of families relying on the support to be able to eat. We, like many other small farms and CSAs, mobilised to see what role we could play in supporting low income families. In the first year, we fundraised amongst our members and supporters to create a ‘Solidarity Fund’ to be able to grow veg for the food bank to distribute. The following year, we worked with the Landworkers Alliance to explore more sustainable approaches to solidarity veg box schemes. We started distributing cheap and free boxes to those who really needed it through our own scheme, as well as participating in the TGrains Accessible Veg pilot.

We felt strongly though, that first, we couldn’t rely on donations and fundrasing to be able to make this vital, nutrient-dense and healing food available to lower income households and, secondly, that we didn’t want to create a two-tier system, segregating ‘full’ CSA members, and those using our solidarity scheme.

So this season, we’ve offered our CSA membership on a sliding scale for the first time. This means that there is no ‘Solidarity scheme’. All members are full members, enjoying the full share in the harvest and the benefits of being a part of a CSA. But they can pay what is realistic for them within a range. In the spirit of a circular economy, those who can, ideally pay at the higher end, to allow those on a tight budget to pay at the lower end. Our experience so far is that it is balancing out very well - it’s looking like a financially sustainable model for how we can build food security into our CSA into the future.

What is the Value of Food?

Our work as veg growers and as a CSA veg box scheme has also highlighted that there are real challenges around the way food is valued. We feel pressure to make our food cheaper to meet the need of the times, while our costs continue to go up and we already struggle to make the business work with what we can value our veg at in the current market. Of course, there’s the issues of ‘artificially cheap’ food, with many of the costs hidden in an unsustainable global food system. We are used to food being cheap - which is unrealistic and unsustainable. There are broader issues around where we place food in our lives, what importance it has in our individual and collective cultures. The average household currently spends 12% of their household income on food, whilst it was once 40%. There are many countries around the world where this is still the case.

Good food has become discretionary in this country, and is often the first thing to go in household budget cuts. We talk a lot about low-income households, but our experience has been that this particular dimension is the same across the socioeconomic spectrum. A majority, immaterial of wealth or financial comfort, will choose to make cuts to the food that they eat first, compromising on the quality of what is fuelling their body. There is a deep sadness in that fact. There are, of course, significant economic, social, political and ecological challenges and crises converging in these times, and the way they impact the poorest and most vulnerable in society needs to be addressed. But we also need to change the way we think about food, and place it central to our lives and our lifestyles, we’ll realise the fuller potential of local food, and the central role CSAs can play in local resilience. We need to acknowledge the role small farms, CSAs and local producers can play in rebuilding and revitalising our connection to food and our collective health.

Which speaks to how a strategy for food security needs to understand the whole spectrum of contributing factors to an impoverished food landscape and must be one that removed barriers to local, sustainable, nutrient dense foods, but also values that food and the people that produce it.

Engagement is key, and opportunities to be directly involved in the food and part of a community who an share recipe ideas, cooking tips and knowledge about the unique character and needs of each vegetable that you might find in a veg box are key. Face-to-face, community support and giving people the chance to benefit from the full spectrum of health benefits that come from growing food together, I believe, are far more likely to create lasting benefits and lasting commitments to eating this way. What’s more, a few hours volunteering can earn you a free veg box here at Glasbren. Rather than a hand-out, with all it’s charitable connotations, this is veg that is earns and that volunteers have played an active role in producing.

I look forward to hearing from all of the speakers and panellists today, for what I’m sure will be a fascinating conference that paints a picture of a vibrant, progressive and forward-thinking local food movement in Wales, that we are proud to be a part of. The TGrains pilot is just one way in which we’ve felt supported and encouraged by this movement to do the work that we are doing. It’s telling of the times that we are being included in these conversations and that small farms are being given a voice in shaping policy, strategy and the plan for how we tackle food insecurity, climate change and build a localised food economy in Wales.

The ‘Food in Communities’ conference was filmed, and will be published on the Food Sense Wales website, if you’d like to catch up on my panel or any of the other panel discussions, talks and presentations.