The Ukiah Farmers’ Market Food Stamp Match is going strong into its eighth week at the market. In this match program, food stamp users can double the money they spend at the farmers’ market. (Food stamps aren’t physical stamps anymore – they are like a debit card, and called Electronic Benefit Transfer – EBT – so EBT and food stamp are interchangeable terms throughout this article).
The project has come together thanks largely to the efforts of Cassie Dillman, an AmeriCorps VISTA serving her second year in Ukiah with First 5 and The Gardens Project. Dillman is from Texas. She is addicted to iced tea and has cultivated a forest of succulents in her bedroom.
Dillman works with Food For All Mendocino, an organization that increases food stamp awareness and enrollment in the County. Food For All had kicked around the idea of creating a food stamp match program. Food stamps bring federal funds into the local community, and by spending those funds at a farmers’ market food stamps offer a direction transfer of federal funds to support local farmers.
In October of 2010, Dillman travelled to New Orleans for the annual conference of the Community Food Security Coalition, where she participated in a workshop on food stamp match programs. She was inspired by meeting people operating food stamp match programs at farmers’ markets around the country and by seeing such a program in action at a New Orleans Farmers’ Market. What especially excited Dillman was the lasting effect these programs have. Most markets saw food stamp use increase by 75 - 100 % from pre-match program levels even after matching funds ceased.
When Dillman returned to Ukiah, she noticed a grant available from the Community Foundation of Mendocino County. The Ukiah Farmers’ Market is the grant applicant, but Food For All Mendocino and particularly Dillman worked on the proposal. The Community Foundation awarded them $5,000.
There is a $25 cap on the amount the program will match for individuals each week. Food Stamp recipients swipe their card at the Farmers’ Market table, receive wooden Farmers’ Market tokens, and with the food stamp match program they receive double the amount of tokens they paid for, up to $25 for a total of $50 when matched. Why the cap? “We want to encourage people to come back,” says Dillman. Scott Cratty, manager of the Ukiah Farmers’ Market, elaborates that the goal is to give new people at the market “a depth of experience with fresh local food and get them hooked and coming back.”
The program will continue until the $5,000 runs out. Dillman suspects this will take about six months.
In the first four Saturday Markets of the program, food stamp users spent a total of $1,812 at the market, with about half coming from matching funds. Before the matching program, food stamp users were spending an average of around $50 at the market per week. By the fourth week, the matching program had been used 47 times with a total of 34 unique users.
Those individuals who do come back several times to take advantage of the program excite Dillman most. “It’s not just about getting low-income people to the market to have access to healthy food.,” she says, “It’s about the farmers, too, and increasing their revenue and helping them build relationships with new communities. I am seeing people come back multiple times.”
Repeats or not, the program is getting new people to the market and increasing awareness that EBT is accepted there. “People are telling their friends they can use EBT at the market. It’s creating a new level of awareness and buzz,” says Cratty.
Dillman describes the delight of working the EBT booth: people’s surprise when they learn about the match program and ask “all season? And I don’t need to give you anything?”, farmers coming back to cash in handfuls of tokens at the end of the market….
If it weren’t for the food stamp match program, Ukiah Farmers’ Market revenues would be down from this time last year, says Cratty. Will these new market patrons keep showing up to the market after the match funds have run out? Well, Cratty mentions that the emphasis of the market this year is value, to try and dispel the notion that the market is expensive and elite. He and Dillman emphasize that by cooking instead of buying prepared foods, and by purchasing foods that are in season, shopping at the Farmers’ Market can be just as affordable as the super market. They place a special emphasis on the notion of eating in season, citing that when something is in season locally, it can be cheaper than the grocery store. This logic strikes me. There is something so inherently sensible about eating seasonally that it trumps even the schizophrenic non-logic of our global markets!
peas and love,
Lucy
