People are signing up for CSAs in record numbers. Could the once-struggling model sustain small farms through hard times—and beyond?

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect the fact that Black farmers in the Southern U.S. had pioneered a community-supported agriculture model in the 1960s and ’70s.

On March 12, four days before seven Bay Area counties would issue a shelter-in-place order, Lorraine Walker and her stepson Andrew put 24,000 plants in the ground at their 105-acre Eatwell Farm in Dixon, California.

The farm had been trying to expand its wholesale numbers over the previous year, selling to several San Francisco restaurants and the Capay Valley Farm Shop, which supplies to Silicon Valley tech companies. But that still only made up about 15 percent of their overall sales, with the rest going to their community supported agriculture (CSA) program and to San Francisco’s Ferry Plaza Farmers Market.