Selling Produce in the Snow - Generating Income with a Winter CSA

by Heather Mikulas, Extension Educator, Allegheny County

The last thing producers may want to think about in the middle of the growing season is extending the growing season.  However, that is just what many Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) business models are doing across the state to meet consumer demand for fresh, vibrant food.  Many farmers are finding that summer share customers desire to eat local twelve months out of the year.  Serving this niche market can open a revenue stream, with winter CSA boxes bringing in an average of $40 a week in Western Pennsylvania, and this income can help farms offset those winter purchases for the upcoming summer season.  Market value for boxes varies in different geographic regions due to particulars such as hardiness zone, storage, growing facilities, transportation, and customer base.  Many winter CSAs quickly fill and have waiting lists.  In this post, we discuss some considerations for cultivating produce sales during the winter months.

Partnering with other farms to market a well-rounded box

Winter CSA box.
Photo credit: Coon Rock Farm

Your farm may excel at storage of apples and squash, but how will that satisfy customer demand?  Talk to other growers in your area to explore the idea of a cooperative winter CSA.  This model has been successful in many places, with several producers contributing cider, produce, baked goods, grains, and other items to round out winter shares.  A challenge with this model is coordinating pickup and delivery, but once that schedule is worked out, transportation costs can be shared, as well as revenue.

Planting greens can bring in the green.  If selling produce in the cold months to bring in the cold cash is attractive, understanding plant biology is key to properly selecting plants which can be successfully grown and stored during the 'off season.'  For instance, working with plants that germinate in cold temperatures, or have slow respiration rates to provide longevity in storage is key to having marketable produce.  Set up your business for success by selecting cold hardy plants to grow or store instead of planning on heating a high tunnel with propane all winter, a sure budget buster.  Many cold hardy greens such as kale, chard, spinach, cress, and mache will survive hard frosts and even light freezes with some protection from desiccating winds.  Many Brassic species, carrots, and leeks also perform well.

Agritainment, selling value-added products, and community building

Many customers enjoy visiting farms during the growing season, and winter CSA on-farm pick-ups can provide opportunities to extend a farm's agritainment season while boosting sales of value-added products.  Options for customers could include cross-country skiing or sledding on the "back 40," sleigh rides in the snow, sales of hot cider and hot chocolate, and offering farm branded value-added product lines to add to the standard box at pick-up are all ways to cultivate year-round revenue streams from high season customers.  Just make sure to check with your liability insurance if having customers on-farm is new to you.

Convincing customers that root crops are delicious is critical to your marketing strategy.  Many committed locavores may turn their nose up at a celeriac root, but one taste of a creamy soup or roasted version of this strange looking vegetable is enough to send a creative cook home with your product, inspired to slice and dice.

Since many winter crops have this image problem, tap into a niche customer base willing to take the chance that parsnips really are sweet and delicious, and have the fortitude to tackle a large squash to create seasonal recipes.  The trick from the producer standpoint is creating storage to slow the respiration and decay process.  Just remember to control temperature, humidity, ethylene, and provide customers with recipes.

Winter CSAs are an opportunity, but do come with some infrastructure costs

Here are some considerations to help you with successful profit margins.  As with many things in life, good timing is everything.  Timing fall plantings correctly can help maximize profits and efficiency.  Marketing these frost-kissed vegetables can be creative as the sugar content concentrates with exposure to cold.  Carrots can be marketed as "candy carrots."  What mom doesn't want to buy those for her kids?  Making sure greens are teacup sized before planting in mid-August will help ensure the plants are mature enough to withstand cold stress.  Carrots should be thumb-sized before frost to be successfully harvested after frosts, and again in late winter/early spring.

High tunnel production for winter CSA.
Photo credit: Scott Arbor

If fresh greens are more to the taste of your customers and growing prowess, here are some upfront costs related to production to turn greens into "green."  To provide protection to field crops when the cold northern winds start to blow, consider investing, as a minimum, in row cover cloths on homemade metal or flexible PVC to create low tunnels.  Two layers of row cover cloth can keep mature cold hardy greens alive through the December holidays.  Some producers report success in keeping crops alive through winter with a kind of dormant period in January and February.  Keep in mind, harvesting from low tunnels is difficult work, so if the investment of a high tunnel is feasible, it will make the winter work easier from a physiological standpoint.  Remember to cover plants in high tunnels with row cover.

Planning for a new business venture can seem overwhelming during the day to day management of an existing business.  Farming on paper is worth the time, as calculating upfront costs and comparing them to projected cash flow is what it takes to assess potential profitability.

Extension can provide technical assistance in the development of CSAs via production, marketing, and business development support.  For further reading on this topic, please visit Penn State Extension's Ag Alternatives website for publications on CSAs and Cooperatives.

Real-Time Monitoring of Your Farm Equipment

Farmers rely on their equipment everyday to run their farms.  It's imperative to have good data on how each piece of equipment is used and how much it costs to operate in order to optimize machinery to it's fullest potential (read more about machinery optimization in my past post).  

To collect data in real-time, AgCo has developed AgCommand, a device that collects data about a specific piece of equipment and delivers the information via a cellular modem and GPS in the device to the AgCommand website.  The website gives reports that track engine hours, fuel consumption, operator efficiency, equipment health info, and field-specific machine information. Reports can be used to monitor and control operating costs and for planning, billing, and maintenance scheduling.  This kind of information would be very helpful in making decisions on how to best use your machinery.

Figure 1.  Example map of a farmer's land and an AgCommand report on the working time of a piece of equipment.

Another great feature of the AgCommand system is geofencing.  As Farm Industry News describes it, geofencing "allows the user to build a virtual fence around equipment using GPS coordinates. So when equipment leaves the fenced-in area, the telematics system sends a text message or e-mail alert. This can help avert theft, or simply let you know that your planter, sprayer, or combine has finished work in a field and is moving on to the next. Similarly, telematics curfews can alert you when a machine is started after working hours."  

As a farm business owner, have you ever heard of or used the AgCommand system or something similar?  Are you willing to try this new technology?  Of all of the reports and information generated by the system, what is of greatest importance to you?  Can you think of any other data not mentioned here that you would like a system like this to collect?  Are you ready to embrace this new technology?

Finding and Keeping Your CSA Members

by Brian Moyer, Penn State Extension Program Assistant

Think about who your ideal CSA member is. Find them and keep them.

One of the attractions of having a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm is it allows you to focus more on farming and spend less time on trying to figure out where you are going to market your harvest. While there may be some truth in that, one still needs to find the "community" portion of the CSA that will support your farming venture so let's look at some ways to find shareholders or members and explore some methods you can use to keep them.

According to a survey of shareholders of CSA's in the Mid-Atlantic Region that was compiled by Lydia Oberholtzer for the Small Farm Success Project, on average, CSAs have to replace 55% of their shareholders every year.  This can be a lot of work and worry every winter when you'd probably rather spend your time planning and ordering seeds for your upcoming season.

Who Are Your Shareholders?
Spend some time learning about the members of the community you want to grow food for. What are their staple foods? What do the demographics look like?

Knowing who is in your community might influence the products you will offer, drop off points, what kind of shares you are offering, events you may have, and how you communicate with your shareholders.

Finding Shareholders
No matter what form of agriculture you do, you will have to be involved in some form of marketing, and CSAs are no exception. The dictionary definition of marketing is: The total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing, and selling.

Marketing requires three things: time, tools, and a bit of knowledge. Time for marketing is not the first thing we think about as farmers, but maybe it should be. Think of it this way, the harvest isn't fully complete until the food is in the customers' hands.

There are many marketing tools available to us today that can make reaching out to your customers or shareholders so much easier. The trick is selecting the tools that are right for you.  There are the obvious ones: logo, business cards, and invoices. These are very important. They give your business a "look" or "feel" and something that your customers will recognize immediately.  Once you have those basics, how are you going to use them?

How do your potential shareholders get their information? Do they search websites? Do they use Facebook? Do they have a newspaper subscription? Knowing the demographic you are trying to reach will help you select the marketing tools that will work best for you.

Nationally, the demographics of CSA shareholders are suburban or urban, they are educated, mostly female, between the ages of 30 and 49, and are already consumers of organic foods. They want high-quality food and they want to support local farms.

If this is the demographic of your community, then such internet tools like websites and social media might be one of your options.  Ah, but not all social media is created equal. There are demographics for different networks.  For instance, if a majority of your shareholders are women, the social network site Pinterest may be one you will want to look into since a majority of its users are women. Social media can be a good tool for instant and brief communication with your shareholders.

Whatever you decide to use, all your tools should direct people to your website. Think of your website as the hub and your other tools, such as Facebook, Pinterest, blogs, e-newsletters, etc., as spokes. The website is where all the important information should be.

A website should include three main things and they are what farmer Lisa Kerschner of North Star Orchards calls background info, basic info, and bummer issues.  Background information would include letting folks know why they should invest in you.  Are you an experienced farmer or are you just starting out? Why should they become shareholders in your farm? Be sure to include any testimonials from existing customers if you have them.

Basic information would cover things like how much is a share? Where do I pick up my share? What does a share include? What are my responsibilities as a shareholder? Also let folks know if you are partnering with any other farms to provide products for the shareholders.  Bummer issues would discuss: what if I can't pick up my share this week? What happens if there is a crop loss?

Keeping Shareholders
Just as you need methods to communicate with your shareholders, you should provide ways for the shareholders to communicate with you.  You need to know why they join, stay, and leave. How do they use the produce you provide? Is it enough? Is it the quality they expected?

Some tools you can use:

• Create a "core group" of shareholders for advice, feedback, and planning
• Create opportunities for feedback (during the season and at the end of the season)
• Talk to members at pick-up
• Have a "comment tree" (paper, web, email)
• Have an email listserv for the shareholders
• Conduct surveys (email, web, paper) at the end of the season
• Learn why members don't renew

The biggest reward for taking the time to use these tools effectively is having clear and better communication with your shareholders.  This will results in better retention rates and spending less time in the winter trying to find new shareholders and more time doing other things.

For more information on marketing, check out our website and Pinterest site.