Another excerpt from "Animal Vegetable Miracle," Barbara Kingsolver's 2007 book. This one comes from the same paragraph we visited last time, but I wanted to make a separate point:

Crop failure is a possibility all farmers understand, and one reason why the traditional farmstead raised many products, both animal and vegetable, unlike the monocultures now blanketing our continent's midsection. [p. 54]

The notion of crop failure — hell, the notions of crops at all, as opposed to consumer goods sold under plastic wrap in supermarkets, has longer standing in most Americans' thinking — came to me in a new way during the hurricane last month.

Though we more recently get our produce from home and community gardening, our family has been a participant in community-supported agriculture over several seasons. We were attracted to it by several of its virtues: more directly supporting farmers, more local goods, fresher goods, favorable prices, etc.

But what's happening in CSAs is that farmers are eliminating a lot of the risk inherent in farming by selling what they haven't grown yet. If it's a good year, buyers get a lot. But if it's a bad year — say, if there's a hurricane — buyers bear a big part of the loss.

Yes, part of what a CSA customer is buying is insurance for the farmer — ensuring that the farm will survive, because the buyer believes that presents a value to him or her. But I wonder how many CSA customers, especially in the fairly recent growth in their numbers, really know they might be paying their money and not getting their produce;

Conditioned by a lifetime of grocery shopping, I can't say we much considered it.