Workplace CSA Programs

Bring the Farm to Your Workplace

As a local foods eater, you ‘get it’—the amazing flavors of the food, the convenience of selecting the foods you prefer online, and the delivery to your home or selected location. And this wholesome, organic food is good for you. What’s not to get, right? Those of you who are also CSA shareholders really get it.

Think back to when ‘you got it.’ Was it when you realized how simple it is to eat so well? Did you see how consistently cooking at home with food from someone you know became something to look forward to? Maybe it was when you figured out you can add pastured proteins to your vegetable CSA Farm Share delivery to have most of the food you need for the week. Some of you have told us it was when you realized you felt better when eating like this.

Many of our CSA shareholders became initiated with an incentive voucher from their employer. Several employers, like UK, LFUCG, West Sixth Brewing, Transylvania University and others incentivize employees to take part in an organic CSA Farm Share. These vouchers encourage employees to adopt a healthy-eating lifestyle, both for the employee’s own good and for the good of the company itself. The data coming out of the Kentucky Farm Share Coalition seems solid: Employees’ medical claims are reduced when healthy food consumption is increased, and the companies’ cost to participate in the CSA incentive program is actually a savings on their healthcare costs.

We want to help more employees—people, all people—in Kentucky eat better, reducing healthcare burdens and growing the local food sector. It’s easy to bring a CSA Farm Share to your workplace, whether through a voucher incentive program or as a CSA Farm Share pickup location. 

If you already participate in a workplace wellness CSA Farm Share voucher program—whether through the Kentucky Farm Share Coalition or your company’s own program—be sure everybody around you knows about it. It’s hard to share food dishes in the lunchroom nowadays, but it’s easy enough to share recipes and photos of all the wholesome goodness you’re working up at home. Folks may be especially impressed to see the variety of foods available all year. A little visual enticement goes a long way. Thank the decision maker at your company who made the CSA vouchers happen. 

If your employer does not offer a healthy-eating wellness incentive, do all of the food-sharing and CSA-talking above, then ask your company’s decision makers about hosting a CSA drop-off program or even an incentive program—it’s as easy as setting up a Zoom call. There are several ways companies can get involved in connecting their people with healthy eating through a CSA. Payroll deduction is a no-cost way for employers to help folks get signed up, for example. We will gladly connect via a 30-minute lunch and learn program with your place of work or worship, book club or home to help you enlighten people you care about. Our website has robust CSA Farm Share details, and we can get electronic or printed materials to you, as well, if you contact Betsy here at the farm.

Workplace wellness incentives and workplace CSA pickup locations help everyone get it—both the good food and the reasons behind the good food. It so happens that the CSA Farm Share subscription model is also the most efficient way for us to produce and distribute good food. Your commitment to eating well brings stability to our sixth-generation family farm out here on the banks of the Elkhorn Creek. 

You get it. We get it. Thanks for your help in helping others get it. —Mac Stone

P.S. If you think this sounds familiar, it’s a rework of Mac’s article encouraging workplace wellness programs last year. We know these programs are a success and thought it was worth revisiting the topic. Winter is the time of year for employers to set up their workplace CSA programs!