Where were you the first time you learned about community-supported agriculture, aka CSA? A farmers market? Or online?
Where were you the first time you learned about community-supported agriculture, aka CSA? A farmers market? Or online, researching the future of our food system? Chances are, you weren’t getting your hair shampooed. Although, that’s actually not such a far-fetched idea.
Inside Triple Crown Salon, a studio in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, sustainable agriculture is a growing topic of conversation between stylists and their clients—and that’s by design. We spoke to owner and longtime CSA or community-supported agriculture member Natasha Speth, back in early March, right before the pandemic, climate disasters, and political upheaval of this year had really taken a hold, and even then she said, “I think going back to the root of all things is really important…we need to think about the whole picture. When I opened my own salon, I wanted to carry products that don’t just perform on a professional level but also align with my personal belief systems around sustainability and wellness. Davines was the clear-cut choice.”
To say the concept of clean, sustainable beauty has taken center stage within the past five years would be an understatement—it’s the industry’s headliner. Globally, the organic personal care market alone is projected to spill over $25 billion by 2025. But for a purpose-driven company like Davines—an Italian brand of premium hair care products—the holy grail of seeing a short, naturally derived ingredients list on your shampoo bottle can’t be where it ends.
“It is so important to take care of ourselves as well as the environment,” said Speth, reflecting recently on the past year of turmoil. “When we look at the storms devastating the South and the fires ravaging the West, it is hard to ignore the result of climate change. It only exemplifies the fact that we have to do more. We have to think about where our products come from.”
As a certified B Corp and a 1% for the Planet partner, Davines is paying it forward by circling back to where it all starts and blurring the lines between beauty and agriculture. In doing so, they are showing how beneficially interdependent these two worlds can be for our communities and the environment.
“Almost everything in our modern lives has agriculture to thank—personal care, textiles, furniture, food,” says Megan Larmer, a director at Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming in Cold Spring, New York. The demand for clean, natural products has skyrocketed, but it’s not as simple as knowing that something is farm-grown. With modern industrial agriculture, we consumers have little information about where exactly our food comes from, how it was grown, or who grew it. It will take top-down change to totally repair. But in the meantime, we have more avenues than ever to help build a better agricultural future, thanks to efforts like Davines North America’s Beauty, From the Ground Up initiative.
The program is a natural opportunity for a beauty brand to join forces with agriculture’s grassroots, yet quickly growing CSA movement to reshape the food system into one that implements responsible farming practices, works together to value everyone from the farmer to the consumer, and rebuilds the connections between people and their products. To do it, Davines has teamed up with prominent CSA coalitions (think networks of community-supported agriculture farmers and support staff) across the U.S., working with leaders like Larmer to spread awareness about the power and value of local food systems and directly support those closest to it, including many of you reading this article.
Originally published at MBG