Community farming enthusiasts gathered in Gloucestershire earlier this month for a landmark event.

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Sponsored by Organic farming organisation the Soil Association, the launch of the Community Supported Agriculture Network in Stroud, home to one of the UK's best known CSAs, sought to celebrate the growing number of food producers and communities forging closer ties.

The Community Supported Agriculture model aims to reconnect people with their food by creating partnerships between farmers and the local communities they serve. In the UK, this basic principle has taken a diverse range of forms, from locals helping farmers reduce their financial risk by sharing the burden in exchange for a share of the reward, to more active projects, where members of the community volunteer to work the land.   

CSAs are already well established in countries including France and the United States, and the approach is rising to greater prominence elsewhere. Though community farms may be managed in a variety of different ways, the CSA model enables communities to take control of their food, producing a range of nutritious produce in ways they find acceptable; whilst in some areas, CSAs are focused on vegetable and fruit production, and are mostly organic, elsewhere, larger CSAs produce meat, milk and even bread and honey.

According to figures from last year, there are around 200 CSAs in the UK, of which the majority are less than five years old. In the United States, there are over 12,000 such farms, according to USDA estimates.

Research published by the 'Making Local food Work' campaign last year shed light on the social benefits of the UK's CSAs, 75 percent of which offer training to improve the skills of members and volunteers, and the extent to which they provide for those at risk of social exclusion; 12 percent of scheme members were shown to have a household income under £15,000 a year. Employment on CSAs also tends to be higher than on conventional farms, with the equivalent of 0.14 employees/hectare compared with a mean of 0.027 employees/hectare across UK agricultural as a whole.

The meeting in Gloucestershire was the first national CSA event in the UK since 2011. As well as launching the Network, attendees also shared 'on the ground' solutions to challenges being faced by CSAs and held workshops on setting up a CSA and managing volunteers.

The aim of the network was to bring UK Community Supported Agriculture projects together, establishing certain guiding principles for the CSA movement and providing better resources to support the development of new projects. The Network will also aim to promote CSA to the public and provide better representation to government.

According to Tony Little, of the Organic Centre Wales, the Network "Will be incorporated as a multi stakeholder cooperative, reflecting the movement's desire for an organisation owned and democratically run by the projects themselves."