Support the Berkeley Basket CSA Expansion!

At Berkeley Basket CSA, we are working to reimagine our local food system, and we need your help to grow! 


Growing on two backyard plots, each with just 600 square feet of growing space (the average farm size in the US is 441 acres and there are 43,560 square feet in an acre) we currently provide 13+ families with fresh, hyper-local, climate-friendly produce for 32 weeks out of the year.  Community Supported Agriculture (CSA for short), is a food distribution system that connects consumers and producers through a weekly produce subscription. 


 Last season, we sold out of our CSA shares, and we realized that we had outgrown our two existing backyards. After an extensive search, and in true 'community-supported' fashion, another backyard has been shared with us to meet the needs of our community! With your help, we can raise money to fund Berkeley Basket’s expansion into this site and help us feed over 20 families this year!



What is the Berkeley Basket CSA?


Our mission is to grow as much food as possible for local residents using residential backyards, while honoring our relationships to our community and to the earth. Our produce is freshly picked and distributed to our community members, many of whom walk just a few blocks to pick up their veggies. In most cases, our CSA shares are picked up just feet away from where the vegetables are grown.  


Founded in 2009, Berkeley Basket has been providing fresh, hyper-local produce in the city of Berkeley for a decade.  Beyond growing food, the founders of Berkeley Basket CSA led a successful effort in 2012 to amend Berkeley's Zoning Code to allow the sale and trade of homegrown produce. The passage of this “Edible Gardens” legislation  allowed more Berkeley residents to legally sell what they grow, and expanded access to hyper-local food in our city. It provided a new chapter to Berkeley’s local food movement and inspiration to other communities around the country. 


Since our growing spaces are right within our city, CSA members have the opportunity to actively participate in their food system and to truly know their farmers, something that is rare these days. We feel so lucky to be able to use Berkeley Basket as a way to build relationships, and we open our backyard farm sites to community events like potlucks and work parties. In this way, we create a stronger, more resilient community together! To learn more about the history of our project, visit our website . 




Our Practices 


In the Bay Area, food travels an average of 500 miles  to arrive on people’s plates. Our backyard-grown produce travels less than two miles from backyard to front porch.  Where conventional farming is a leading contributor to climate change, Berkeley Basket’s farming practices are ecological and climate-friendly to minimize our impact and to mitigate climate change! We use low-water irrigation systems and minimal tillage, and we are totally pesticide and synthetic fertilizer free. Instead, we work with natural systems to grow our food the old fashioned way. We have incredibly low rates of on-farm food waste.




Meet Your Farmers


In the US, women make up only 12% of principal farm operators. We are women farmers, and supporting our crowdfunding campaign will help us break through the “grass ceiling”! 


We are Marianne Olney-Hamel, Moretta Browne, and Rachel Lane, the co-Farm & CSA Managers for the Berkeley Basket CSA. We met in 2016 while apprenticing at the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS) at the UC Santa Cruz Farm, where we earned certificates in Ecological Horticulture. Collectively, we hold 20 years of experience in the food system! 


We’re in a very special moment at Berkeley Basket--2019 is the first year that the Berkeley Basket has been farmed by more than one farmer! Our crew of 3 works together as a team, using a non-hierarchical collective model. Last season, Farmer Marianne ran Berkeley Basket alone, and by collaborating with more homeowners, she grew the CSA from 7 members to 13.  This season, Farmer Marianne asked Farmers Moretta and Rachel to help her expand the CSA. Team work makes the dream work, and the plants and CSA members alike are reaping the benefits of our combined skills and experience.




From Lawn to Farm - Why We Need Your Help!


We found a new backyard farm site in West Berkeley that will provide meaningful work for two new farmers. This residential backyard is just a block away from our current site! We are so grateful to be building a relationship to this new plot of land and to be collaborating with the homeowners on this project. 


Before we broke ground on this site in May 2019, we tested the soil for heavy metals. As is common in the bay area , the soil in this backyard is contaminated with lead. With your help, we know we can overcome even this barrier as we bring our third farm site to life. To do so means we need to build raised beds before we can plant our crops. Bringing this site from lawn to farm requires many steps including: designing our raised beds and irrigation layouts, sourcing materials, digging trenches, grading the lawn, milling lumber, constructing our irrigation system and raised beds, filling our beds with soil, and starting plants from seed. While the site is under construction, Marianne, Moretta and Rachel will be doing this work, but we won’t have any income from produce grown at this new site. Your help will ensure that Berkeley Basket’s intrepid farmers are paid for our labor and are able to support ourselves financially during the build.


The faster we can build our raised beds, the sooner we can feed more families in Berkeley. When our new backyard farm is up and running, we are excited to offer some reduced-cost CSA shares to make fresh produce available to folks with lower incomes.  






Let’s Build a More Equitable Food System Together


The three of us at Berkeley Basket CSA each hold identities that are impacted differently by the historical injustices of the agricultural system of the U.S. This system was built on stolen land using the labor of skilled African farmers who were forcibly brought to this country.  As a result, much of our country’s laws are deeply rooted in racism and classism, and to this day, farmers and farmworkers are excluded from national labor protections like minimum wage laws, overtime, and the ability to unionize. This means that the cost of the food we consume is hugely subsidized by the low wages that farmers earn. 


As young farmers working and living on occupied Ohlone territory, it is our responsibility to use the privileges we do hold to model practices that move us toward liberation in the food movement. This season, with your help, we will increase access to our high-quality produce by implementing a sliding scale pricing model. We feel it is critically important to make space for people who hold marginalized identities to build practical skills. This includes queer folks, people of color, and women, who are traditionally under-acknowledged in the farming world. We do this through a collaborative approach that makes space for knowledge sharing and peer-to-peer learning. 


Your donations will go to support living wages for farmers. This will go directly to feed more Berkeley residents using innovative, hyper-local, climate-friendly food practices right in Berkeley’s backyards.


Donate today and join us in creating a more equitable and just food system.


Follow us on Instagram @berkeleybasketcsa , check out our website and please share our campaign with your networks.

Thank you!