ABSTRACT
The concept of the moral economy directs attention to the moral and ethical frameworks through which everyday decisions are framed and enacted. This chapter shows that by exposing the very real differences in the priorities and actions of EarthShare members, people can escape imaginings of local food systems as perfect or entirely free from ambiguity or conflict but still see them as sites of political potential. The chapter begins by introducing the concept of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and locating CSA within a broader literature on local food, moral economies and ethics of care. CSAs have been heralded as offering opportunities to strengthen place-based community relationships between food growers and eaters. Community Supported Agriculture has been identified specifically as a form of food production/consumption that can be characterised as caring practice. EarthShare is a not-for-profit co-operative organisation which was founded in 1994 in Forres near Inverness, Scotland. It is the longest running CSA in Britain.
