Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a partnership between farmers and their local community. The origins of this model began in the 1960s with Booker T. Whatley, a Black horticulturalist and Agriculture professor at Tuskegee University in Alabama. Inspired by his predecessor George Washington Carver, Professor Whatley saw a deficit in the availability of food for his community. In an era where access to grocery stores and markets was being denied to Black citizens and enforced by Jim Crow Laws, there was an undeniable need for farmers to more directly connect to their communities; in return, farmers could earn the money required to keep ownership of their land. 

Whatley coined the term “clientele membership club,” essentially the earliest form of a CSA where the farmers would advertise their business and acquire funding at the start of the season, ensuring they had the funds for production and equipment. This was at a time when industrialization was entering the agricultural market, and the loans for the necessary equipment to compete were only available through bank or government loans, which farmers were also denied access to. 

The birth of this communal and socialist model stemmed from the needs that the people faced in a time of violent capitalism, and the system is still as important today, especially with the advancement of science and technology which shows that industrialization has a significant impact on the quality of the food we consume.