Brown Envelope Seeds (part 2)

Irish CSA

In West Cork, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) has a different meaning than my understanding of a US CSA. Here, a CSA is when a farmer contributes land, growing knowledge and the machinery to plant a crop for the community. Then, from the time the crop is planted the community is responsible for the maintenance of the crop, mainly weeding and watering. Potatoes are a popular CSA crop (as may seem an obvious choice in Ireland). The residents of Brown Envelope Seeds, Madeline and Mike, have this type of CSA.


(Henry the Horse helped earth the potatoes at Mad and Mikes)

However, it's been a less than perfect experiment. Either the community participants have been reluctant to do the work, or, the call for help was not broadcast widely enough. Perhaps it was due to both. Regardless of the cause, weeding and water have been left primarily to Madeline and Mike (and Zach and I while we stayed with them!). In Ireland, veg growers offer community members "box schemes," but its not clear that the patrons of the boxes are committed through out the growing season.

The term "community supported agriculture" should encompass more than a community supported (or committed) box schemes. But under the Irish CSA that I've witnessed the farmer is providing the community with resources (knowledge and machinery) with no benefit besides the community service. Can farmers be expected to provide this community service when their time and resources are spread so thin already? It may work for some, but not the average farmer. To be a sustainable form of community agriculture its seems that the farmer should have some benefit beyond the charitable aspect OR the food should be grown by a community entity with its own monies and resources.



Besides this one community potato project, Madeline and Mike have other big ideas about community supported agriculture, in its broader meaning. They'd like to expand to grow other staple crops. In their opinion staple crops are the most important crops to be grown for and by the community. Oats are their next venture. Last year a community group grew an oat crop, which was harvested and put in storage.

The next obstacle was "de-hulling" the oats, a necessary process to make them edible. The group scoured Ireland for facilities that would process the small amount of oats. However, they found that the processing facilities would only deal with large amounts of oats. In addition to this, some processing plants had contracts to only du-hull oats going to certain companies to create their oat products. So in response Madeline and Mike secured a grant to buy a small scaled de-huller. In the future they hope to charge a reasonable fee to groups for small amounts of de-hulling, making it another entrepreneurial opportunity for Brown Envelope Seeds all the while improving the communities access to processing facilities.