Community Supported Agriculture for local economic development.
We support local economic development through our To Grow a Village initiative, a public-private project for rural economic development working in concert with local government in Gmina Lelów, a rural administrative district in Częstochowa County, Silesia in southern Poland.
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA): TGAV is a Community Supported Agriculture project supporting the farming of industrial hemp and the development of low-level local hemp processing and manufacturing facilities, which holds great potential to expand the economies of Poland’s rural villages, towns and counties, which suffer the lingering after-effects of socialist policies imposed during the post-WWII period to 1989. While 97% of Polish farms are now in private hands, fully half are held by Polish farmers who work small subsistence-level plots on a “from my field to my table” basis – with very little outside commercial activity.
Hemp, a valuable crop: Because hemp is a valuable crop, it does not require huge landholdings to reflect relatively high potential value in the context of the small Polish farm. Existing property/buildings are sufficient for the production/storage of basic hemp products envisioned. Rural authorities think mainly about economic development but few have come up with creative or innovative ideas for maximizing the potential at hand. Poland is a proven agricultural exporter (among the top 3 growers and exporters of apples in the world, for example).