CSAs where I live are a luxury good for a few people to feel better about themselves. You pay in much more than you get back (compared to a grocery store), and what you get is geared towards variety to make it more appealing. As such, you get enough of any particular veg for one or two meals, at a cost that is wildly expensive for most people. I tried one summer, and it was cute but replaced approximately 0% of our grocery bill.

Just to throw out some numbers, I pay $27/box for my fruit n' veg mix, which I could mostly replicate for maybe $15-20 at the grocery store. But the freshness can't be beat, and I think it's fun to see what I can do with whatever shows up. It's definitely not replacing my entire grocery bill, of course, but I do think it is worth it.

That' not bad. Where I am for $45, you get a big bad of lettuce, a couple of potatoes and an onion. Last years was so disappointed that we didn't renew. Ten years ago the same CSA was $600 for the season, 4 months, and it was a good sized bag with a pretty nice selection of produce. Granted I think every bag included some beets but by the middle of the season I really liked beets so it was a plus. Now it jut seems to be a better deal to go to the farmers market and get whatever looks good.

I guess it depends on your goals. It will never be as affordable as the grocery store as the economies of scale aren't there. The idea is to provide reliable revenue to a local farm in exchange for high quality produce produced in a sustainable way. It doesn't make me feel particularly "better about myself" to connect with the family that provides us this service, but I do like their mission, and I want them to be successful, so in my case it's worth it. Also, I would imagine pricing varies wildly from one region to the next, so we may be comparing apples to oranges (or swiss chard for that matter).