Designing a community-supported agriculture model for increasing food security.

Abstract

The institutionalization of participation is a topic that has been discussed in different ways over the last few decades. There are many diverse aspects of the agricultural sector and rural communities that can be identified and used to bring about a major change in agriculture. Community supported agriculture (CSA) is one of the participatory and sustainable approaches that can be used in this regard. CSA is a relatively new socioeconomic model for producing food materials, increasing food security, improving the quality of food materials and conserving agricultural land, plants and animals. This research aimed to design a CSA model that was operationalized in Markazi province, Iran, with the aim of increasing food security. It was a survey study applied through a questionnaire. The statistical population (N=110) consisted of all active farmers in Ghazel Dareh village who were selected through the census method. The necessary information was collected through a questionnaire (84 of which were completed and returned) and analyzed using SPSS v. 25 and LISREL. The results showed that economic, socio-institutional, policy-making, educational and infrastructural factors significantly influenced the development of CSA. Infrastructural and socio-institutional factors with impact factors of 0.88 and 0.54 had the largest and smallest effect on CSA, respectively. Finally, since all impact factors were positive, we can say that improving each of these factors could improve the development of CSA in the study area.