Food Markets Can Help Fight Hunger
Posted by Emily Booth on Friday, October 16, 2009
For the first time in human history, those with more money are eating fewer calories than the poor. Our agricultural system has made the least healthy calories much cheaper to produce. This results in a new kind of hunger. In today’s world, hunger manifests itself in a very different way — rich in calories, but seriously nutrient deficient.
Share Our Strength has always maintained that hunger is not simply about the number of calories one consumes, but about the quality & nutrition of the food.
Incorporating fresh foods into one’s diet is important for a variety of reasons. One of the most exciting trends that is making fresh produce more widely available is the movement to introduce SNAP/EBT cards (“electronic benefit transfer”), & WIC benefits to farmer’s markets. Many urban farmers markets have garnered media attention as well as hundreds of loyal shoppers by implementing such programs.
FreshFarm Markets in DC has even implemented a program allowing WIC & EBT/SNAP users the option of “doubling dollars” at their H Street and Silver Spring markets. Expanding purchasing power at farmers markets goes hand-in-hand with Share Our Strength’s mission of increasing access and education to such programs. We support these efforts by funding organizations like DC Hunger Solutions that, by studying and increasing access to programs like Double Dollars, help fight hunger everyday.
So what’s the catch?
While this trend has definitely been gaining steam in recent years, access to farm-fresh produce is not even close to universally accessible. Farmers markets in urban areas do not always have this option available because it is expensive to start & keep going.
The transition from paper food stamps to EBT cards, while great for being convenient & reducing stigma, poses a new problem: these open-air markets now need a $1,000+ machine to process benefit transactions. This has made it hard for farmers markets, which normally rely on low start-up costs, to incorporate this practice without outside help. And often the markets that do garner the appropriate support aren’t in neighborhoods with the most need.
In the past few years, there have been several creative solutions to these hurdles.
- D.C. Hunger Solutions created the Farmer’s Market Collaborative, a group comprised of market managers, city agency staff & other advocates dedicated “to support farmers’ markets and address barriers to bringing more fresh produce into underserved neighborhoods.”
- New York State implemented the NY Fresh Checks program, designed to creative an incentive-based approach to drive food stamp customers to farmer’s markets.
- In 2008, the state of New Jersey began a pilot program offering farmers POS machines if they would accept SNAP benefits.
- Washington State passed legislature that would assist markets in purchasing POS & wireless technology for commercial credit/debit purchases & EBT redemptions.
We would love to hear if/how this movement is taking hold in your community. Do your local farmer’s markets accept food stamps? In what neighborhoods? Is this service being used? By whom? And do you think that this is a sustainable solution?
October 16, 2009 | | Tags: farmers markets, food stamps, SNAP
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