CSA Farms
CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Farming are an interesting concept. Basically, instead of just buying whatever they want from a farmer, people buy a seasonal “share” and get a fixed percentage of whatever the farmer produces. There are some variations, but the general idea is that it relieves farmers from dealing with fickle customers and the vagaries of farming. Instead of having to deal with supply and demand issues, the farmer has fixed demand (because he is selling fixed shares) and the customer carries the burden of supply issues. If there is a bad harvest, everyone gets and equal share of the bad harvest.
It is an interesting hybrid. In a sense, the farmer becomes simply the labor for his customers, who are “share farming” and thus dealing with all the real life difficulties of farming–too much harvest of one thing, too little of another. By spreading the risk across a stable customer base, this allows small-time farmers to survive.
For more information, read the wikipedia article, check out this example farm, and for more reading, see this Google search.
the author's humorous novel.