Community supported agriculture (CSA) is one response to major ecological and social problems in the conventional agrifood system. Here we are concerned with how CSA management can enhance the economic sustainability of CSAs. More specifically, using a survey of 111 CSA farms in California, we analyze how specific variables in five domains-CSA management characteristics, farmer characteristics, farm characteristics, economic characteristics, and region-influence retention rates (the proportion of CSA members continuing from one year to the next). Our analysis involves first conducting bivariate correlations, then building a simple causal model that theorizes the direction of causation, then constructing a series of ordinary least squares (OLS) multiple regression models to hold constant independent variables. Our discussion draws out recommendations from our findings for CSA farmers and organizations that support CSA, including increasing the length of the season, increasing crop type diversity, including fruit in standard shares, bringing farming practices into line with organic standards, working with other CSAs to reduce inter-CSA competition, and changing marketing regions for farms in certain regions that appear to be highly saturated. We conclude by identifying more collective routes that CSAs can take to cultivate "CSA people" for a more sustainable economic dimension of CSAs in the long term.

This article is a description of data related to the research article entitled "The (un)making of 'CSA people': member retention and the customization paradox in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in California" (Galt et al., in press). The data presented were collected through two statewide surveys, conducted via internet-based questionnaire, related to Community Supported Agriculture in California: a former CSA member survey, and a current CSA member survey. We gathered responses for these surveys from April 2014 to January 2015. The data include responses from 409 former CSA members (those who had left) from 27 CSAs and 1149 current CSA members from 41 CSAs. The data tables included here contain information relevant to the retention of CSA members and other concerns, and come from two analyses: 1) comparisons of characteristics of former and current CSA members, and 2) importance-satisfaction analysis (ISA) of former and current CSA members' experiences with CSA. We make the detailed results of these analyses available in this article so they can inform other researchers' analyses of the increasingly important phenomenon of CSA member retention, and, more generally, customers' participation in and satisfaction with a variety of alternative food networks (AFNs).

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) faces substantial challenges in increasingly saturated and competitive markets in which competitors highlight their localness. Retention of members is crucial for the model to provide benefits to farmers; otherwise, excessive losses of members requires considerable recruitment efforts and undercuts farmer well-being. We conducted statewide research on CSAs in California, including surveys of 409 former members, 1149 current members, and 111 CSA farmers, to examine former members' reasons for leaving. We answer three questions: How do former and current members differ in their satisfaction with CSA? Why do former members leave their CSAs? And, does share customization increase retention rates? Examining the datasets together shows what we call the CSA customization paradox: while it appears that former members' primary reasons for leaving could be addressed by offering them share customization, the farm-level data shows that offering share customization has no effect on CSAs' retention rates. The discussion offers three hypotheses to further examine the CSA customization paradox, and argues for a deeper theorization of CSA people to understand the limitations of share customization as a strategy for member retention. We conclude with specific routes that CSAs can take, individually and collectively, to retain members and cultivate CSA people.

The effects of competition within alternative food networks (AFNs) remain largely unex- plored. Using a study of farms that operate Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programmes in California, the state in the USA with the most CSAs, we empirically examine the effects of competition within alternative food networks. We conducted a statewide survey of CSA farmers in California, which collected data from 111 CSAs. For this analysis we construct a perceived competition index composed of variables that measure farmers’ perceptions of competition with numerous market outlets and their being constrained in raising their prices due to competitive pressures. Our analysis shows that perceived competition is negatively correlated with CSA farms’ profitability, farmers’ satisfaction on a number of fronts, various indicators of the social embeddedness of CSA, and two community food security strategies. We conclude that competition is a real, although differential, phenomenon experienced by many CSA farmers in California, and that this competition impacts CSA in ways that undermine some of its commonly held values, especially fair farmer compensation and strong member-farmer relationships.

In the U.S. there has been considerable interest in connecting low-income households to alternative food networks like Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). To learn more about this possibility we conducted a statewide survey of CSA members in California. A total of 1149 members from 41 CSAs responded. Here we answer the research question: How do CSA members’ (1) socioeconomic and demographic backgrounds, (2) household conditions potentially interfering with membership, and (3) CSA membership experiences vary between lower-income households (LIHHs) and higher-income households (HIHHs)? We divided members into LIHHs (making under $50,000 annually) and HIHHs (making over $50,000 annually). We present comparisons of LIHHs’ and HIHHs’ (1) employment, race/ethnicity, household composition and education, use of food support, and enjoyment of food-related activities; (2) conditions interfering with membership and major life events; and (3) sources of information influencing decision to join, reasons for joining, ratings of importance of and satisfaction with various CSA attributes, gaps between importance of and satisfaction with various CSA attributes, valuing of the share and willingness to pay more, and impacts of membership. We find that LIHHs are committed CSA members, often more so than HIHHs, and that CSA members in California are disproportionately white, but that racial disproportionality decreases as incomes increase. We conclude by considering: (1) the economic risks that LIHHs face in CSA membership, (2) the intersection of economic risks with race/ethnicity and cultural coding in CSA; and (3) the possibilities of increasing participation of LIHH in CSA.