He Started A Meat CSA To Support Local Farmers. Now He’s Starting A Bank With The Same Mission.

CSAs — Community Supported Agriculture programs — were more popular than ever during the pandemic, as demand for meat increased and people turned to local suppliers rather than grocery stores. One such CSA is Walden Local, founded by Charley Cummings, that delivers local organic and grass-fed beef, chicken and pork in monthly boxes across the Northeast.

Now, Cummings has hatched a brand-new idea to support local agriculture entrepreneurs: He wants to start a bank.

“In building the supply chain of Walden Local, we recognized there were a lot of limitations with the existing lending infrastructure,” Cummings told Morning Edition host Sean Corcoran on Monday. “What we're trying to build is specifically supporting these sustainable local food and agriculture businesses where you recognize the need for a different type of lender.”

After offering bonds to member families garnered lots of interest at Walden, Cummings and his team saw an opportunity. He considers many commercial banks “black boxes,” meaning customers don’t really know where their money is going or what it’s supporting.

His bank, on the other hand, will allow consumers to make a conscious impact with their money. “There seems to be this tremendous desire in general for folks to align their investment activities with social impact, particularly when that impact is local, tangible and specific.”

The new bank will be a mutual bank, meaning it has no shareholders and it’s owned by its depositors. This, Cummings says, adds a layer of transparency to the banking process for strategic consumers.

“We're looking for deposits from consumers that are interested in local food and agriculture and want to see the impact of their deposit dollars in the form of investment in a sector that I think drives disproportionate returns in terms of the economic, environmental, ecological outcomes of the community,” he said. “And this is a place where I think local farms have a disproportionate impact on those areas."

Cummings will use his experience in building Walden to launch the bank and win over customers, he said.

“One of the things that we learned in the meat industry is you don't change people's mind by vilifying their current behaviors,” he said. “What changed my view of the meat that I feed my family was experiencing the amazing positive that comes from eating a chicken that was grown by your neighbors. And the same is true of banking.”