Value transformation via experiences. CSA participants began with positive environmental values. Though experiences such as working on the farm, building relationships with farmers and learning new skills, their general environmental values were transformed into specific relational values, based on a connection to a particular farm and the food produced there. These experiences might foster greater and more general environmental commitment and values.
Credit: Graphic Design by Alana McPherson (https://www.iamsci.com/); concept: Mollie Chapman

By Stefan Geissberger, and Mollie Chapman.

Read the full paper here.

Community supported agriculture (CSA) is an alternative way for farmers to produce and sell food directly to their customers through subscriptions to a weekly box of groceries. Solidarity agriculture (known as Solawi in German-speaking areas) is a type of CSA that also requires subscribers to work at the farm for several days every month. This allows consumers and producers to share risks and be independent from market prices.

Our paper focuses on the values that motivated Solawi CSA members to participate and how their experiences changed them over time. Something can be valued for its usefulness (instrumental value), valued for its own sake (intrinsic value), or valued because we have a personal relationship with it (relational value). Such relational values are tied to a connection to a specific place or thing and differ because they cannot be substituted or generalized.

We visited three cooperative farms around the city of Zürich, Switzerland. Their stated goal to bring producer and consumer together fit relational values perfectly. We interviewed 21 members on what motivated them to join, what they appreciate about the community, farm, food and environment and how these things changed over time.

We found that people originally joined for reasons like healthy food or to support organic farming. Members who regularly worked at the farm started to appreciate food, production and nature in a more mutual, relational way. Topics like food waste, fair prices and sustainability were no longer abstract ideas but tied to their relationships to real people, things and places they knew. There was a strong difference between knowing intellectually and being convinced of it by personal experiences. We conclude that actively involving people such as via workdays, is important in enriching and changing values and behaviors.

Our results show that mutual give-and-take relationships and working with nature could help people reconnect to their environment as a part of their daily lives. Experiences such as working on the farm are also shown to create a deeper connection to nature.