Cost analysis

It's a little early in the season to be thinking about whether a CSA membership is cost-effective, especially when Wisconsin floods have made the CSA risk factor very real this year. But I was curious about what the vegetables we're getting would cost us if we bought them at the co-op, which is were we do about 85 percent of our non-CSA food shopping. (Specialty items at Asian markets and last-minute runs to the Lunds across the street make up the rest.) So I went to the store with a list of what we'd gotten and jotted down the prices.

What we've invested: A share at the farm where we participate cost $500 last spring. We split a share with another couple, so each household contributed $250 to the share price, and each week Patrick and I get half of the spread. The picture above is an example of a whole box. With our CSA, this will go on for 20 weeks, so the price per full box is $25.

What we got this week: I found that the veggies in our box would have set us back $34.88. But we wouldn't have gotten the kohlrabi and the red scallions would have been green and would have come from 2,000 miles away. Plus, the strawberries, by far the largest investment, would have been conventional. That means even early in the season, and while recovering from the second "hundred-year flood" in two years, the farm is giving us more abundant, better-quality food at a 40-percent savings. [UPDATE: My math is rusty, and I was tired when I wrote this. It's a 28-percent savings on the veggies through the CSA or a 40-percent markup on the veggies through the co-op, depending on how you look at it. Right? Math folks?]

And our co-op is nothing to sneeze at! It has the best selection of any co-op I've ever visited—that's why we've been members for four years.

Of course, saving money on healthy food isn't going to clinch it for everyone. You need a fairly high tolerance for spontaneity if you're going to like a CSA. But I'm glad to report that, at least here and now, it's by no means a luxury.