An emerging market in the Longview area makes an end run around the market.

Community Supported Agriculture is putting down roots as the first area farm of its type. It's attracted about 50 investors its first year. Bill and Dona Segers are farming on the model at their home north of Longview and on acreage in the Noonday community near Hallsville. Consumers lay down $600 to $1,200 for half and full shares of annual harvests at Bill's Organic Gardens.

"I just liked the idea of not having to go to a bank and borrow your money," Segers said. "Just let the local people help the farmer, and you give them a good product and share the yields with them.?

Segers uses what he calls natural growing processes manure for fertilizing, oils and soaps for insect repellent but does not plan to seek an organic certification.

"We don't want to get involved with the government in any way," he said. "We just raise things natural and organic. We don't use any herbicides or synthetic pesticides or insecticides. If you use, 'certified something,' someone has to certify you. And the only one that does that is the government. That's why we can sell ours at a cheaper price, $1 to $1.50 a pound average."

The owner of an outlet for naturally grown produce, on U.S. 271 north of Gladewater, agreed. Arlene Parker sells produce grown by herself and local farmers from roughly May through October, but sells heirloom seeds year-round. Heirloom seeds come from non-genetically altered produce.

"That's the old-fashioned, standard plants ... that will produce their own kind from the seeds," she said. "(Sales) have just been incredible this year. I'm almost sold out ... They don't mind that it's not organic. They just want local stuff that's fresh."

Timothy Woods, an extension service professor at the University of Kentucky, reported in a July survey of nine Midwest states that the average CSA was four growing seasons old. The average numbers of shareholders had grown from 59 in 2007 to 80 this past year.

Nearly all of them marketed their product through additional channels such as grocery stores or farmers markets.

"I don't think you'll find two of them that are alike," he said. "We've got some CSAs that are what we call collaborative CSAs several producers putting their resources together."

Jerica and Matt Cadman operate a 103-acre ranch that, like CSAs, markets directly to local consumers. The two LeTourneau University alumnae, though, sell naturally raised beef and pork. They plan to add chicken to the menu next year, the wife said.

"It's sort of like a CSA," she said, explaining customers pre-order quarter and half sides of beef.

Avoiding the bank seems to be a universal attraction for the growers, Woods said.

"One of the things that attracted a lot of producers ... is this shareholder idea where they pay up front," Woods said. "They can plan their year's operation and not worry about, Am I going to be able to sell it?' ... I think the CSA folks doing the direct marketing will have a pretty significant niche that they can work with."

The University of Kentucky survey also found two out of three CSA farmers reported the use of organic techniques without seeking the organic certification.

Kate Fitzgerald, a policy expert with the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, said the certified organic label has not proven a must-have for natural farmers such as Segers.

"In terms of consumer preference, they value local over organic," she said. "Local is more important than organic. Consumer studies consistently show that supporting the local economy with food dollars is increasingly popular."

Farmers in CSA also get better prices when selling directly to consumers, Fitzgerald said.

"So it benefits the farmer," she said. "For the consumer, it's better health, better value for the dollar. And for the environment, it's reducing the stress that's being placed on the system by transportation, reducing the use of petrochemicals that are used in the products on the food shelf."

Such concerns in past decades might have been considered anti-business, the language of liberals, said Fitzgerald, who worked eight years in the Texas Department of Agriculture in Austin.

"It's not just a hippy-dippy organic world," she said. "It's real economics."

Copyright, Longview News Journal 2010