Current Status of the Community-Supported Agriculture Model in Poland

Social innovations responding to the local needs of farmers and consumers are the subject of recent studies, and their results indicate effectiveness in mitigating the effects of crises and, in the long run, in building the resilience of local communities to future challenges. One of the social innovations is the Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) model. This article presents the current status of active CSA groups in Poland. The paper’s main objective is to identify active CSA farms in Poland and then analyse the individual farms’ CSA offers, the number of people they reach, and their members’ characteristics, motivation, and degree of involvement. As of 2023/2024, when the study was conducted, 13 food-producing farmers were inventoried for 35 groups, reaching an estimated 1200 people. Taking into account the Polish context and referring to the experience and examples of CSA communities in Europe and the world, the following conclusions were drawn: the need to establish an umbrella organisation to network the current CSA community in Poland and to support the already active farmers through, among other things, advocacy, education and coordination of CSA model development at the national level.

www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/7/2965