Do you get vegetable boxes from your local farm? Do you think its worth it? Do you think you get better quality fruits and vegetables?

In my experience, most of the fruits & veggies at our local supermarkets come from local farmers so you're getting fresh & quality produce if you catch it when they are rotating their stock. However, in an effort to wring out the maximum profit, some grocers will leave the produce out too long in an effort to sell it. So if I had a choice, I'd go to the farmer's market & not take any chances with the supermarket.

I don't have access to a CSA box where I live, but I try to shop local farmer's markets regularly and buy produce which is marked as "local" in the supermarket. Whole Foods lists the origin of most of their produce, and given the choice, I select produce grown nearer to home.

There are a lot of issues involved in buying food. There's flavor. There's shelf life (I've found farmer's market produce tends to be picked riper and therefore spoil faster). There's cost. There's ecological impact. There's human impact. There's health.

All those issues make it hard to say whether some produce is "better quality" than other.

I buy local because it supports the local economy, does less environmental damage, and because I know that the farmers at the farmer's market I shop at grow a lot of different things. Diversified farms are better for the soil and potentially better for your health than monoculture farms (they also require less pesticide; if your local CSA is organic, that's even better). Local farmers are also less likely to select produce varieties based on aesthetics and shelf-life like large commercial farms must. Farmer's market customers don't care if the carrots are perfectly straight and bright orange. Again, this could have an impact on health and it helps keep the food ecosystem diverse.

Buying local also forces you to buy more seasonally, which in turn forces you to buy more diversely, and a diverse diet is definitely good for you. Last week I made a curry out of turnips instead of eggplants because turnips were in season. I might not have eaten turnips for weeks if I hadn't been "forced" to. Sure the supermarket had eggplants from somewhere, and if I wanted I could eat eggplants all year round, but that wouldn't be as good for me as eating both eggplants and turnips.

As for taste, without doing a blind taste test, I'm not sure I could tell you. There certainly isn't a big enough difference to tell without testing.

But for me, all these benefits add up to "better quality" produce even if tastes the same and sometimes goes bad faster. Everyone has different values though. What's better for me might be worse for you. Or as J.D. would say, do what works for you. Best way to find out what works for you is to try it.

I got a box once. The produce was great but there wasn't much of it for how much we paid. My wife goes to a produce stand that has some "clearance" produce and generally good prices on most things. For the same money we spent on a small, half full box from the CSA, she can get enough fruits and veggies to cover our kitchen counter.

I have been doing my homework on food. In my area this is what I have found out; it's not necessary to get a CSA box, a trip to my local farmers market can literally fill up my refrigerator with veggies.

I spent less than 30$ on veggies and will have to freeze some in order to not let them waste.

I like the IDEA of community supported agriculture. But when I looked into it in my area I found that the farmers seem to just take advantage of the movement. The boxes are small and cost an outrageous amount. I could literally get the same things (organic) in the grocery store for about 1/3 as much. That's way too big of a differential for me to support. Until they get their act together and wake up to economic realities it is not a reasonable option for me, in my area.