Community-supported agriculture is all the rage on the sustainable food scene, and while the phrase may be less palatable than the produce, Brighton and Hove has its first CSA project – Veg Share.

Hailed as a way of putting people who eat in touch with people who grow and an alternative model of food distribution, CSA is based on the idea that a community can financially support a farmer through both the harvests and the failures, with benefits on both sides.

Veg Share is a project of Fork & Dig It community allotments at Stanmer Organics in Brighton, and began circulating food to members at the beginning of July.

Coordinator Emily O’Brien says, “It’s like a weekly veggie box delivery, except we don’t get any stock externally, people get a share of the harvest we grow. If the harvest fails we ask members to share the pain, but if we have a glut then they benefit too. It’s like buying shares in a company – you could have a share in the loss as well as the gain, it’s the same model.”

Members are referred to as shareholders and signing up involves buying shares rather than paying a weekly subscription or grocery bill.

The project is running on a trial basis only, with deliveries up until the end of December, before the Fork & Dig It team take a break to regroup and analyse its success or otherwise.

Currently there are only ten shares available, with 18 members signed up, two holding full shares and 13 with half shares. Veg Share has also taken into consideration the volunteers who grow the produce and they get to take home a portion of the harvest in return for their work.

Emily says, “We kept in mind how much has been produced previously on our land as well the achievements of other community-supported agriculture projects nationally and set a limit on the share numbers. We wanted to keep it small this year as we want to learn so that we might be able to do a bigger scheme next year.”

Expecting people to take a hit if the crops fail is a big ask, and a curious idea, particularly when we are all so used to food on demand from 24-hour supermarkets. But Veg Share say their research shows that, despite the risk, their fresh local produce is cheaper than if you were to buy the equivalent at Infinity Foods, Waitrose organics or Abel & Cole.

Emily says it isn’t a scheme intended to take over completely from the current model of food production – and it’s not for everyone.

“We’ve had a lot of interest,” she says, “but not everyone signed up. It’s completely understandable because the amount and type of produce is hard to predict, especially as this is the first time we’ve run it, and you lose an element of choice – you get what we grow.

“But the people who have signed up understand the model and have bought into the ethos. It’s about food produced locally, sustainably and not-for-profit.”

A food project for 18 people may not seem groundbreaking, or even chipping away at the surface of the problem, but Harvest Brighton and Hove are currently running a feasibility study for a much larger CSA scheme that Emily says could lead to a community-owned farm.

“Seven or eight years ago no one had heard of community-supported agriculture,”

she says. “Now it’s a bit of a buzz word; there are projects everywhere and it’s very big in America. It’s definitely expanding.”