CSAs AND MONFORTE RENAISSANCE

COMMUNITY SHARED AGRICULTURE (CSA) is an alternative local food funding/marketing model that debuted in Canada in 1989. CSAs create a direct link between a specific group of consumers and one or more farmers to address two main problems:
1. Diminishing the risk farmers bear in leading the food production and distribution process
2. Raising consumers’ limited awareness of the provenance of their food supply

Members pay a lump sum in advance for a designated share of the season’s harvest, helping defray farmers’ upfront costs of production and distribution. In return, the member receives a weekly basket filled with foodstuffs harvestable at that time.

COMMUNITY SHARED AGRICULTURE (CSA) is an approach to growing and purchasing food products in which the farmer and consumer work cooperatively. The farmer wins a guaranteed market; the consumer gains high quality, fresh food, as it becomes available.

THE MONFORTE MODEL

My dream has always been for Monforte to have a home of its own – a dairy of our own.

Of course the biggest challenge in an ailing economy like this is raising the capital. So we are funding the new Monforte Dairy via the principles of COMMUNITY SHARED AGRICULTURE.

Here’s our goal: everybody who funds us has the opportunity to share, to be part of what the new dairy means – a secure home not only for Monforte but for the 20-some farms from which we buy our milk; for the local producers who will supply us with the ingredients for new complementary products such as charcuterie, flatbreads and crackers; for the artisans yet to be; the next generation of cheesemakers who want to craft cheeses with an eye to both the future of the cheesemaking art and the deep traditions of the art, all to the highest professional standard. Cheesemaking the way it was meant to be.

Most of all, we want to give everyone and anyone the opportunity to be an agent of change; to have a voice in changing the politics of how quality food is produced, distributed, marketed and sold in Ontario.