President Barack Obama has called on people to reduce their carbon footprints. We've had several recent E. coli and salmonella outbreaks in mass-produced food. And people need to save money in this economy, but want their neighbors to have jobs supported the money they spend.

The concept of community supported agriculture could help people with all of those concerns.

CSAs first cropped up in the U.S. in 1986, according to the Rodale Institute, an organic research and development nonprofit. CSAs give both the farmer and the consumer certain guarantees about the business of eating. The farmer gets paid upfront in exchange for a minimum guarantee of product over a certain time.

I joined a CSA for the first time this summer for a lot of reasons. I was first Michael Pollan-ated three years ago when I read "The Omnivore's Dilemma." Pollan's mantra -- "eat food, mostly plants" appeals to me. Also, I want to support local businesses, and I think that's all the more important in this economy.

Finally, I'm always on the hunt for ways to reduce my own production of greenhouse gases. Cherry tomatoes are available year-round from California, Mexico and Florida. But for the next 20 weeks, I'm getting cherry tomatoes from VanScoy Farms -- trucked just 56 miles from Ridgeway, Ohio, to my local farmers market in Worthington. And VanScoy's cherry tomatoes are sweet enough to be dessert.

"You'll never go back to store-bought tomatoes that have traveled thousands of miles during the gardening season after you've tasted a fresh, locally grown tomato," said Alice Henneman, a dietitian at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. "By buying locally grown food, you can purchase food that can be grown for taste and picked at the peak of freshness versus being bred and picked at a point in time so it could withstand traveling a couple thousand miles to reach you."

The Cost Of Food Deliveries

So, there's the carbon reduction and the taste improvement. What about the cost?

I added up my grocery receipts for last fall. We shopped at places from Wal-Mart to high-end local groceries over that time and averaged $130 for a week's worth of food, toiletries, dog treats, etc.

I've had two CSA boxes so far. I paid $970 to Bill VanScoy back in March for my share of his summer produce. Over the 20 weeks of my membership, that's $48.50 a week. What I've received in my two weeks -- roughly, because the modest packaging does not include exact measurements -- is about a pound of sausage; 2 pounds of ground beef; less than a pound of bacon, pork steak, chuck roast, pork chops, round steak; 4 pints of green beans; 4 pints of purple beans; 4 pints of cherry tomatoes; a large tomato; three cucumbers; four heads of lettuce; 4 pints of strawberries; a loaf of white bread; a loaf of herb bread and two lunch meats. I'll get soap and fresh eggs once a month.

I still have to go to the grocery for things like yogurt, fish, coffee and dog food, but it looks like I'm going to save money.

"What's hard for consumers to understand is that there are huge markups at supermarkets," said Bill VanScoy, who has been farming hydroponically for 10 years and selling his produce at local farmers markets.

This summer is VanScoy's first foray into CSAs. He said he was able to set the price at what I perceive to be very low because he's cut out numerous middle men in the process that gets food from farmers to consumer via grocery stores.

"I don’t have to feed people at the local Kroger's, the regional Kroger's and corporate Kroger's -- I just have to feed my family. We, the farmer, don't make a lot of money on our stuff, it is the guy in the middle," VanScoy said. "Another thing is that we don't have to do fancy packaging in our boxes -- we're being simple. There's a lot of money in the middle for packaging and fancy labels and advertising."

So VanScoy keeps his business model simple and passes on the savings to me.

If you're interested in localism, fresh food and helping the environment, there are CSAs across the nation, and you can find them on sites such at LocalHarvest.org.