The Full Plate Farm Collective began in Ithaca NY nearly 20 years ago when Chaw Chang & Lucy Garrison-Clauson’ of Stick & Stone Farm and Nathaniel and Emily Thompson of Remembrance Farm came together to offer a joint veg CSA. Since, it has grown to about 700 members and is now a substantial part of their farm revenue, enough to have a full time coordinator (ie. Molly Flerlage), and brings in product from dozens of other farms and value added producers throughout the region.

Molly and I talk about her role as the CSA manager, how full plate operates at-scale to afford an awesome CSA manager, and how they have leveraged the CSA to help new farmers and address food insecurity. Stick around after the credits, because she reached back out to add some honest thoughts on how scale can provide better long-term solutions to CSA challenges than third-party CSA management platforms.

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