My husband (to be known as JB here moving forward) came home last night from our CSA pickup with no melons, a weather-related crop update, and one giant zucchini.
For those of you who aren't familiar, a CSA is a Community Supported Agriculture share. Basically, you invest in a farm at the beginning of the growing season and receive regular products from that farm throughout the season. There are many reasons why CSA's are great for agriculture, our community, and our health.
In addition to our recent hurricane, and earthquake, we have had a month of record-setting rains on the East Coast, and have been wondering how those rains affected our farm. Turns out that we were relatively lucky. Our farmer is based in Pennsylvania, and while he did lose his entire crop of melons (much to my four year old melon monster's utter devastation), for the most part his farm was spared. He told JB that many of his friends and colleagues who farm in upstate NY had to cancel their CSA deliveries for the remainder of the season.
That's right - cancel. No produce at all, at the height of the season, for people who paid several hundred dollars months ago for that produce. And who aren't getting their money back. CSA's involve sharing risk. They are a real partnership between producer and consumer. The consumer reaps both the benefits and the losses of that risk. Last year's tomato blight = no tomatoes for CSA customers around the region. On the other hand, good weather last summer meant a double crop of corn for us and we were eating corn-on-the-cob well into the fall.
Invest in a business, reap the success, risk the loss. How many of us are courageous enough to do that with our dollars? How many Board members would really be ok with weathering immense losses at the opportunity of great success for nonprofit organizations? How many foundations want to hear real analysis and not just numbers massaged to convince them that they are meeting their objectives?
No answers today, just questions. Including this one: what on earth am I going to do with another giant zucchini?
Teddy likes zucchini. I think the problem with investing is taking the initial leap. Maybe it's like putting on your sneakers for a 5am workout. You dread ut, never want to do it, but are always glad you made the effort after it was a successful adventure.
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