DOES ORGANIC COMMANDA PREMIUM WHENTHE FOOD IS ALREADY LOCAL?

The emergence of community supported agriculture (CSA) farms has been recognized as a newway for small farms to remain competitivewhile engaging in their local community through directmarketing. In this study,we report on first revealed preference valuation of CSA attributes using data on share prices and CSA characteristics for the summer 2012 growing season. Using data covering 453 CSA farms in Michigan,NewYork,Ohio,and Pennsylvania,we develop a hedonicmodel based on firm-level prices to reveal consumer valuations of CSA attributes, including various types of organic certification.We also test for competition in the CSA market using a model of firm entry to evaluate whether firms appear perfectly competitive,which is a requirement when using firm-level prices in our hedonic analysis. Our results reveal a price premiumof approximately 7 % forUSDAorganic certification,although this value is heterogeneous across states.Wefind no premiumassociatedwith competing certified naturally grown programs. Finally, we find that CSA farms exhibit little market power and appear to act competitively even with few market entrants