at this point, i no longer understand what the debate is about.
i was part of a csa in chicago for a couple years and found that it was a lovely arrangement--but that was because my preferences for food and ways of cooking meshed with what i was getting. in the end, you either explore options or you dont. i don't see where anyone is being forced to do anything.

the cost of a csa or sustainably produced food as over against industrial food is a no-brainer---it is a simple matter of scale. it is self-evident that processed foods are cheaper per unit than not processed foods--this is a function of a series of *state* choices concerning what types of agricultural production would get subsidized and which would not the logic of which was put into place after world war 2 and then tweaked significantly in the early 1970s.

if i read similar complaints about the industrial food system--that choices are imposed on you--which they are, like it or not---to the complaints about csa or other sustainably grown food (sustainable being a problem meaning-wise i know) then the debate would make sense--but the idea that the industrial food system is a natural horizon and moves to introduce less processed foods a deviation from that natural horizon operates within a deep historical vacuum, and so makes no sense.

as if fast food is not an imposed range of choices--ridiculous.

We did a CSA for a while also. The stuff was really good but I didn't like paying for a whole season up front ($20/week) and even though the stuff was good, we didn't get a lot of it. Therefore, it wasn't a good value for people like us on a budget.