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 at Tuskegee University in Alabama (where he followed in the footsteps of George Washington Carver), Whatley was an advocate for regenerative agriculture, among other environmentalist practices. At the height of the civil rights movement, Whatley began counseling the Black farmers who were deeply engaged in that struggle.
“The ideas that [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] and others stood for, first and foremost, came from the importance of land and farming for Black communities in the South,” says Clyde Ford, a corporate trainer on racial justice and author of Think Black, as well as the forthcoming Freedom Dues, the story of how Black labor built America.
The popular narrative about the civil rights movement is largely focused on presidential elections, but Ford explains that there were equally as—if not more—important elected positions for Black landowners to vote for, ones that directly impacted their businesses and livelihood. The local farm service committees that determined how federal programs and loans were distributed consisted of elected members, meaning Black landowners could finally have the opportunity to vote for them. “That was critically important to how they received loans, received economic support and essentially received information that would help them as farmers,” says Ford.
Black farmers were routinely denied loans and grants by the federal government, costing them land, money and agency. As a way to help them keep their land while also supporting their local Black communities, Whatley advocated for pick-your-own farms and what he called clientele membership clubs, which entailed customers paying up front for a season of food as a way of guaranteeing business.
“The clientele membership club is the lifeblood of the whole setup. It enables the farmer to plan production, anticipate demand, and, of course, have a guaranteed market,” Whatley told Mother Earth News during an interview in 1982. “However, that means the grower had better work just as diligently at establishing and maintaining the club as at producing the crops. Put it this way: If you fail to promote your club, something terrible happens—nothing!”