Community-supported agriculture programs offer college students a great way to stay healthy and maintain their veggie consumption. Buying a share in a CSA is sort of like investing in future stock: Share costs are estimated based on the past year’s yields and weather conditions and are calculated according to how much the farm will be able to provide for a certain number of people. Members usually receive their shares packed into recyclable wooden boxes; individuals or households buy shares ahead of growing season (usually in the winter) and in doing so, claim a small percentage of that season’s yield.

Universities throughout the country increasingly offer excellent farm CSAs with great deals, easy delivery, and accessibility to local and seasonal crops they may not find at the corner market. Membership to a college campus CSA is usually intended for students, faculty, and local alumni, and produce typically comes from an on-campus farm tended by students and faculty. A member is entitled to pay for the number of shares they would like, but usually each member claims one share and picks up their produce weekly, either at the farm or at another designated area on campus.

College CSA programs are largely considered a win-win—your classmates in ag, food science, and other farming disciplines get the opportunity to cultivate crops for their local community, and you enjoy regular access to farm-fresh produce.

Here are various ways in which some of the best ones function.

University of Vermont, Burlington, and Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont

A CSA program that works with outside producers to provide fresh fruits and veggies to co-eds, the Intervale Food Hub (IFH) serves students at both the University of Vermont and nearby Saint Michael’s College, providing produce from more than 30 Vermont farmers as well as meat and cheese from local producers. Its delivery system is tailored to the college semester schedule, offering spring and fall subscriptions. The program started in 2014, when students at both schools got vocal about their interest in buying locally sourced products. Members order online and pick up their boxes from a delivery location on each campus.

Structure and cost: An IFH member can pay in full or in monthly installments. The costs for college subscriptions with 12 weekly deliveries for vegetables are $23.50 per week, with add-ons such as eggs ($3 a week), bread ($5), and cheese ($7). For meat, members receive three monthly deliveries at $25 a delivery for chicken, $17 a delivery for ground beef, and $21 a week for sausage.

Of course, leave it to the University of Vermont to have competing CSA programs—its campus farm, Catamount Farms, grows plenty of beans, snap peas, cherry tomatoes, tomatillos, and flowers, and has its own indy CSA with summer, fall, and late-fall subscription options. Members pay for a full or half share in advance of each season. A good option for larger student households, a full share can feed up to four. Summer shares are $335 for a full, $195 for a half. Fall shares are $270 for a full and $160 for a half. Late-fall shares (which run from mid-October through Thanksgiving week) are $200 for a full and $120 for a half. Catamount also offers apple- and flower-exclusive shares, and this year will launch a hotly anticipated maple syrup CSA.

Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts

With one of the oldest CSA programs in the country (started in 1991), Hampshire College offers students, staff, and faculty a vegetable and meat share from its on-campus farm, which produces more than 75,000 pounds of vegetables each year. Members are afforded unlimited access to pick-your-own heirloom tomatoes, fresh herbs, hot peppers, edamame, green beans, and different varieties of flowers. The farm is also responsible for harvesting about 1,000 gallons of sap each spring from its 100 maple trees on campus—which produces about 20 to 25 gallons of maple syrup, a highlight of Hampshire’s CSA wares.

Structure and cost: The CSA is based on a campus-run farm and offers weekly pickups to the campus community, tailored around the academic year (plus pick-your-own privileges). Share buy-ins are paid in advance. A vegetable subscription is $360 for three months’ worth of weekly pick-ups, and a meat subscription is $330 for three pick-ups/month.

Duke University in Durham, North Carolina

Duke’s campus farm offers a single summer CSA program subscription that runs from the first week in May through mid-August and includes a plethora of fruits, veggies, and greens. The Duke Campus Farm, operated by students and staff, also hosts community workdays on Sundays, when anyone can come to the farm to help weed, plant, harvest, and prepare CSA boxes.

Structure and cost: One 16-week share costs $400, payable in one or two installments with weekly deliveries to members of the Duke and Durham communities.

Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina

Clemson University’s CSA program includes a fully operational six-acre demonstration farm, a.k.a a learning farm, where students and faculty test various agricultural techniques. Any viable produce that results is considered a bonus; however, the Clemson farm has been successful enough to provide weekly shares of fresh organic produce to faculty, staff, students, and the general public since 2002. It currently produces enough to serve more than 100 members for 28 weeks of the year and to sell surplus produce to nearby restaurants and markets.

Structure and cost: Two 14-week subscriptions are offered in the summer and fall. Boxes contain a variety of vegetables, fruits, herbs, cut flowers, and occasionally honey. Summer and fall shares are $355 each, or about $25 a week.

Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan

MSU’s CSA program is run out of its student farm—a 15-acre, certified organic teaching and production farm. The farm also includes passive solar greenhouses, or hoophouses, which allow campus farmers to grow and distribute fresh produce year-round, even throughout Michigan’s frigid winters.

Structure and cost: The CSA runs 48 weeks a year, broken down into three 16-week sessions, with a weekly pick-up. Cost for a 16-week session is $575, or $35.94 per week, and boxes are filled with eight to 12 items and often include rutabaga, brussels sprouts, Swiss chard, tomatillos, and dill.

University of California, Davis in California

UC Davis is home to a market garden that serves an 80-member CSA program every season. The student-run farm—which launched in 1977, when a small group of students planted their first crops on a 20-acre parcel of campus—provides produce to the UC Davis Dining Services program as well.

Structure and cost: Subscribers must be UC Davis students or employees. The subscription fee is $21 per week, paid in advance at the start of each academic quarter (students enjoy modest discounts).

California State University, Chico in California

CSU Chico’s CSA program is an outcrop of its Organic Vegetable Project, an on-campus, grant-funded farm program that started in 2009 and is run by students and faculty. From April through late December, members enjoy freshly harvested vegetables, greens, flowers, and herbs.

Structure and cost: Members receive weekly shares that include seven to 10 seasonal items and can be selected and picked up at the farm for $100 a month, or boxes can be delivered to an office on campus for an additional $15 a month. In the springtime, members enjoy produce including lettuce, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, spinach, beets, Asian greens, turnips, arugula, kale, and rosemary; come summertime, they feast on green beans, sweet peppers, eggplant, corn, watermelon, garlic, and leeks; and in fall, they receive cabbage, celeriac, turnips, parsnip, sweet potatoes, winter squash, and more.