The Transformative Potential of Dutch Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)

Abstract

There is wide scientific and societal consensus about the necessity of a structural transformation in the Dutch food system, moving away from conventional practices that cause various interrelated ecological and socio-economic issues. This research set out to map the potential of Dutch community supported agriculture (CSA) in bringing about such structural transformation, additionally exploring how this potential could be further harnessed in the future. An extensive literature review and semi-structured interviews with CSA farmers, members, and experts were conducted for this purpose. The findings uncovered that CSA has the potential to challenge and address underlying philosophies and patterns on which the conventional Dutch food system rests, and that cause the interrelated ecological and socio-economic issues stemming from this system. Dutch CSA does this by empowering conscious actors to translate their sustainable worldviews into locally adapted practices that reconnect society and nature in harmony, fostering social and supportive communities that enhance awareness creation, leading to further emergence of CSA. The research furthermore identified enablers and barriers for CSA’s transformative potential on three embedded and interrelated layers, including a practical, political and a deeper layer that encompasses values, beliefs, and worldviews. CSA’s transformative potential could be enhanced through holistic schooling that fosters sustainable value, worldview, and awareness creation, and governance and incentive systems could be redirected to create a facilitating environment for CSA and for diverse societal groups to engage in CSA. The synthesis of this study’s results adds to previous literature that explored transformative aspects of CSA, instead of CSA’s potential to bring about transformative change, and that predominantly focused on general barriers and enablers for CSA on practical and political levels, overlooking deeper level worldviews, values, and beliefs that are instrumental to transformative change. Further emergence of Dutch CSA can start a transformative spiral towards a sustainable and just food system that allocates the benefits of the Dutch agri-food landscape back to society.