Food bank ends CSA operation

Hadley program said to have been area’s 1st

By OWEN BOSS
Staff Writer

HADLEY — This year’s harvest at the region’s oldest community-supported agriculture farm will be its last.

The nonprofit Food Bank of Western Massachusetts said Friday it will discontinue its CSA program at its farm on Bay Road in Hadley.

The reason: to refocus on its main mission of fighting hunger.

Andrew Morehouse, the food bank’s executive director, said Friday that people who now pay to buy shares of the harvest at the Food Bank Farm have many alternatives, including the opening of a new CSA on abutting land will.

Morehouse said Ben and Liz Perrault, who have been tilling the Mountain View Farm CSA on East Street in Easthampton for the past two years, will continue to farm the land in Hadley and have agreed to donate fresh produce to the food bank.

Meanwhile, founding Food Bank Farm director Michael Docter, in partnership with former Food Bank Farm manager Ray Young, will launch a new CSA on Route 47, temporarily named “the next barn over.”

“Those two options should be able to accommodate everyone who wants a share and if for some reason they would rather (use) another location, we have provided a list of the 16 other CSAs available in the area,” Morehouse said. “No one who wants a share should be deprived of a CSA.”
The decision to close the Bay Road CSA, Morehouse said, came after more than a year of information gathering and strategic planning aimed at protecting the best interests of the farmers, the land and the food bank’s mission of providing fresh and healthy food the region’s hungry.

The land itself needs to recover. Production on the Hadley land has been affected by blight and other diseases, according to the food bank.

Some acreage will lie fallow through a crop rotation system designed to counter the spread of plant illnesses.

The Food Bank farm was founded in 1991 as the first CSA in the region. Over the past 18 years, the farm has served more than 700 community shareholders while annually providing about 200,000 pounds of fresh produce to the food bank.

With the closing of the Hadley location, Morehouse said the Food Bank Farm Thanksgiving Store, an annual two-day event during which the Farm Store opens for the public to purchase pies, turkeys and other holiday foods, will also end after the 2009 season.

Owen Boss can be reached at oboss@gazettenet.com