Mogo Farms' field day will explore pros, cons of community-supported agriculture

For beginning farmers interested in raising vegetables, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) provides an attractive entrance point. In this business model, customers pre-pay for a share of the expected harvest, thus helping to offset costs while sharing in the risks of food production. Once harvest begins, they regularly receive a share of the produce.

However, CSAs are complex to run. To be successful, a farmer must know how to produce often 30 or more fruits and vegetables, from planting times and harvest size to fertility needs, pest management and post-harvest handling. CSAs also require good business management skills, from customer service to operating databases.

To meet this challenge, some farmers across the United States are forming collaborative CSAs, joining with other area vegetable farmers as one CSA. In collaborative CSAs, farmers split the work load, divvying up duties such as marketing and distribution, as well as the crops each farm raises. This arrangement lets farmers combine their skills to create a quality CSA.

Morgan Hoenig operates Mogo Farms near Mt. Pleasant, and is now in her third year growing produce for the collaborative CSA Green Share LLC. She will share her experience with the benefits and challenges of running a collaborative CSA at a Practical Farmers of Iowa field day she is hosting on Monday, July 6, from 4-7 p.m. The event ? ?Collaborative CSAs: Some Assembly Required? ? is free to attend and open to everyone. Mogo Farms is located at 2542 Iowa Ave., one mile south of the Mt. Pleasant city limits.

?The benefits of collaboration have been monumental to my farm business, reducing the stresses of providing for a CSA and expanding my customer base,? Hoenig says. ?But working with others has its challenges as well, and we had to become smarter at doing business.?

Attendees will learn about the origins of Green Share LLC, which Morgan helped start in 2013. Originally formed with four other local producers in 2013, members in the collaboration have changed over the years. Hoenig and Shanti Sellz, of Muddy Miss Farms, will describe the start-up process, benefits they?ve experienced, management issues, mistakes and lessons learned, and roadblocks they have encountered.

?So many of us farmers are solitary folks. We all have our own ways of doing things, and that?s sort of the challenge,? Hoenig says. ?We had to learn a lot of skills, like working with the other farmers, trust, having agreements in writing. We originally had an informal agreement, and things got a little messy.?

She says a big challenge was finding the right balance between friendships with the partner farmers and operating their collaborative business. ?It?s just like anything in farming: You have to make mistakes to find out how to do things right. We had to learn the importance of being business-like.?

Hoenig started Mogo Farms in 2008, after being discouraged by the lack of fresh, organic produce available in her farming community. She determined to help fill that void by growing her own. The farm has grown exponentially every year. Mogo Farms now has two high-tunnel greenhouses and six acres of produce. The old 1890s barn has been renovated and turned into a retail space and pack house with a CoolBot cooler.

Practical Farmers of Iowa?s 2015 field day season features 40 field days around Iowa. All field days are open to the public, and most are free to attend. The guide is available online at practicalfarmers.org, or contact the PFI office at (515) 232-5661 to request a printed copy.