Farmers' Harvests Profiting from Subscriptions

By Mike Switzer

Published May 1, 2015 at 5:01 AM EDT

Over the past several years, a growing number of people have been subscribing to local farms' harvests rather than buying all their produce from grocery stores. The program is called Community Supported Agriculture and the number of CSA farms has been growing as well.

Mike Switzer interviews Urbie West, one such farmer and owner of Pinckney's Produce in Seabrook, SC.

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Mike Switzer

After almost 20 years, Mike Switzer retired from Wells Fargo Securities in 2001 as Senior Vice President/Investment Officer and Certified Portfolio Manager. In 1999, he and his wife, Maggie, purchased and operated for eight years the Baskin Robbins ice cream store on Forest Drive in Columbia. They grew the store from a bottom-tier operation in the Baskin Robbins franchise system to one in the top 5% nationwide within three years, tripling sales along the way. While operating the ice cream store, Mike and Maggie received patents for a portable ice cream sink and fold-down sneezeguard they invented and in 2002 started Magnolia Carts, an ice cream cart manufacturing company, which they sold in 2013.

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