Celebrating A CSA Pioneer: Booker T. Whatley
CSA boxes on the packing line, generously offered by Chelsea Dimyan
@chelsea_photography_design
As a dynamic farm operation with several avenues and outlets for produce, it is not lost on us how essential our community is to our success. Of all our outlets, Spade & Plow has invested more time, labor, and resources into the CSA program than any of our other outlets, including wholesale and farmers market combined! The CSA model is essential for us; it is structured to create year-round revenue and security for our business operations. The COVID-19 pandemic has proven how valuable a direct relationship with the farmer has become to bolstering and supporting the food system and the community at large.
This week February 21st-28th (and all weeks, really) is CSA Week, an opportunity for us to recognize the research, know-how, and efforts that it takes to run a program with the consumer at the forefront. There is absolutely no way we could know the value of the CSA, without recognizing the value of the man who brought us the model: Booker T. Whatley.
A man with varied horticultural experiences, Booker T. Whatley (b.1915- d.2005) was raised on a family farm in Alabama, received a B.S. in Agriculture and a Ph.D. in Horticulture, has written at least 40 academic and scientific papers, cultivated several new varieties of sweet potatoes and muscadine grapes, and served in the Korean War operating a 55-acre hydroponic farm in Japan. He spent much of his later life as a consultant and advocate for the small farmer, and is responsible for devising a plan for small farmers to net a well-earned income through educated crop selection and rotation. Let’s also take note of how he was named after Booker T. Washington, the founder of Tuskegee University, and followed in some of George Washington Carver’s footsteps. He’s a legend you didn’t know you needed to know!
“We've made life hard on the small farmers by recommending that they grow exactly what the big boys produce. We'll tell a little guy with 40 acres to plant a scaled-down version of the crop mix that some fellow with 2,000 acres raises. For example, we'll suggest that he keep fifteen acres in cotton, ten acres in soybeans, seven acres in corn, seven in pasture and then try to raise a few head of beef cattle. Well, those particular crops give a very low per-acre return, so what happens? The man works hard and just about starves to death. I say let the big boys grow soybeans, cotton, hay, peanuts and beef cattle. The plan I'm talking about takes the small farmer out of the big guys' ballpark.”
-Booker T. Whatley
Booker T. Whatley coined the Membership Clientele Club model, which has evolved into the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model we know today. Additionally, he advocated for the pick-your-own model for a small farmer, allowing the ‘city folk’ to engage with the farm operations, have a novel experience, and give the farmer an opportunity to charge a premium and mitigate harvest and post-harvest costs. Offering community members a stake in the product at a yearly cost enables the farmer to plan production, anticipate demand, and, of course, have a guaranteed market.
Whatley wrote a handbook in 1987 on How to Make $100,000 Farming 25 Acres, with special plans for prospering on 10-200 acres, though his advocacy efforts and ideas began to bubble to the surface much earlier. With Mother Earth News as a resource, we thoroughly enjoyed reading his interview by the publication back in 1982. It was enlightening to learn that both the viability and plight of the small farm is really no different today than it was 30 or 40 years ago. We do, however, recognize the disappearance of black and BIPOC farmers over time, and the necessity to call out our privilege and responsibility to elevate these farmers’ stories. To know how we farm is to know the path that they have paved for us and with us. The challenge to acquire and effectively farm on a smaller scale is something that all farmers face. We acknowledge, however, that the equity with which these challenges exist is incredibly skewed across races.
Thanks to Booker T. Whatley’s commitment to small ag, advocacy and knowledge, the CSA program at large wouldn’t exist the way it does without him! Thanks for reading along and sharing our gratitude for his vision in creating successful, efficient, and profitable agricultural operations.