by Elizabeth Henderson
When you buy food it’s usually purely transactional, yet there are people around the world who express solidarity through their food shopping. Right here in Rochester, there are many members of CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture farms) who agree to share the risks of farming by paying in advance, and thousands who shop at farmers markets instead of big grocery produce sections. For three days in December, I attended “The flagship global event for Local and Solidarity-based Partnerships in Agroecology (LSPA) of which Community Supported Agriculture is the best-known iteration…” in La Bergerie de Villarceaux, Chaussy, France.
As one of this country’s first CSA farmers and author of Sharing the Harvest, I serve as Urgenci’s Honorary President. For twenty years, Urgenci has been a lively international network, bringing together grassroots farmers, conscious eaters, activists and researchers from over 40 countries “to exchange experience and knowledge, analyze global food policies, and develop collective strategies” to strengthen local/regional food systems, secure dignified livelihoods for farmers and farmworkers, and defend the commons – land, seeds, air, water. Thanks to Urgenci’s “seeding,” there are CSAs in most Eastern European countries and the countries that ring the Mediterranean.
The Symposium opened with a ritual expressing our gratitude to our home planet with a pledge to make a safe space with hope and love in the room.
Urgenci co-presidents Shi Yan Sina (China) and Isa Alvarez Vispo (Basque country Spain) addressed the hundred participants from 38 countries. Shi Yan reminded us that CSA reconnects people with land, farmers with consumers. She recounted her own path to CSA via 6 months in 2008 at a CSA farm in the US. Once home, she organized the first CSA – Little Donkey Farm, renamed Shared Harvest Farm with 100 member households. Since then, with a growing team, Shi Yan has helped establish a national CSA network that provides farmer services and technical assistance. As of 2026, there are over 2000 CSAs united by EcoEarth, a national Participatory Guarantee System (PGS), a grassroots alternative to organic certification.
Isa Alvarez focused on international food policy. Isa represents CSAs as a member of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty, part of the consumer sector of the Civil Society Mechanism of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN, where she opposes industrial corporate control of the global food system and advocates for locally-controlled food sovereignty and agroecology.
We spent the afternoon visiting farms that use some of the 80 hectares belonging to La Bergerie. I toured a vegetable farm and a mixed dairy-grain operation. Both sell at the Bergerie farm store which was well-stocked with breads made from farm grain and many cuts of meat.
After an Apero – a cocktail hour with a wild abundance of snacks contributed by participants – and an ample dinner, we spent the evening watching films about CSAs in Palestine and Roumania.
Dec 12 – Moving the Movement
We spent the day in a series of plenary sessions and workshops. At the plenary, “CSAs in the Fight for Food Sovereignty,” we heard about the Nyeleni Process that issued the Kandy Declaration. A Japanese Teikei (CSA) leader called for globalizing CSA and our shared cultural values of living peacefully and gently on earth. A representative of RIPESS, the international Social Solidarity Economy Network, called upon us to expand beyond food to include energy, housing, health, and other sectors. Several speakers pointed to the urgency of raising the percentage of the price of food that goes to farmers – farmers are quitting and young people hesitate to farm because prices are too low to cover farming costs.
I moderated two of the parallel workshops. In Farmer to Farmer, farmers from Finland, France, Marocco, Mexico, the Philippines, Belgium, Lebanon and Egypt shared their strikingly similar stories about struggles with competition from cheaper supermarket food. In CSA and Climate Change, farmers from China, the Philippines, West Africa and Finland reported weather that has become more extreme – the wet is wetter, the dry drier, the winds more violent.
In the plenary, “Conflict and Weaponization of Hunger,” speakers from Lebanon, Colombia and Israel/Palestine made moving, powerful presentations about how wars undermine food sovereignty. As vividly depicted in the film we had seen the night before, Yara Dowani described Om Sleiman Farm where they have created a CSA, growing vegetables under the walls and constant surveillance of Israeli settlers.
Dec 13 – Final Day
Dec 13, the final day of the Symposium, we held regional meetings and the Urgenci General Assembly. Six US CSA activists and one from Quebec agreed that the North American CSA Innovation Network should expand to include Canadians and Mexicans. The Assembly ratified a 5-year strategic plan to expand outreach, technical assistance and training in CSA to additional countries, compile a report from researchers on CSA Around the World, and on-going participation in the international peasant campaign to uproot corporate domination of the food system. Finally, we elected the International Steering Committee that guides the network.
Looking Forward
I come away from the Symposium feeling encouraged. Solidarity programs are growing steadily in many countries. In the context of increasing far-right ideologies, CSA and agroecology are subversive, chipping away at corporate domination. Many CSA networks focus on deep farm support rather than advertising with consumers, though the Chinese Network reaches a million on WeChat. Shi Yan interviewed me and told me the next day that 48,000 people had already listened to my words! The CSA community is enthusiastic, committed and fun to spend time with. The most surprising proposal I heard is that La Via Campesina in Europe has started campaigning for food social security. As with US income Social Security, employers and tax payers pay into a system that guarantees food security for everyone, an inspiring idea to start planting!