People often cite cost as a reason they don’t buy more local, natural food. It’s just too expensive, they say.
Many local growers are keenly aware of that impression.
“For CSAs and (farmers) markets, they do have a perception of being out of reach for low-income families,” said Matt Van Wey, one of the owners of Quackenbush Farm outside Ridgefield. “But hopefully that will go away in the future.”
As the growing season gets underway, Quackenbush Farm is among the operations taking a relatively unusual approach to sharing its bounty with more people this year. The farm will accept food stamps in payment for shares of its community-supported agriculture program, or CSA, by selling them at the Vancouver Farmers Market.
Plenty of farmers markets accept food stamps through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and they have for years. But it’s less common for farms to offer the same option for CSA shares, which allow customers to buy a season-long supply of vegetables, usually in weekly installments.
By bringing weekly boxes of vegetables to the Vancouver market, Quackenbush Farm can sell them under the umbrella of a market that’s already approved to accept food stamps. Most farms — including Quackenbush — aren’t set up to accept SNAP benefits directly at their own stands. Doing so requires an authorization process through the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Quackenbush will still ask those customers for a small deposit when its CSA season begins in June, Van Wey said. Participants would then pick up their vegetables at the market each week.
“It’s kind of a box-by-box basis, but we’re still signing them up for the season,” Van Wey said.
The Vancouver Farmers Market, like others, uses a token system for customers buying approved items with food stamps. The system was put in place locally several years ago with the help of Clark County Public Health and a Kaiser Permanente grant, said Theresa Cross, a health educator for the county.
In addition to the Vancouver Farmers Market, the Salmon Creek and Camas markets also accept food stamps, Cross said. All three also participate in a program that gives visitors a match of up to $5 if they’re using low-income benefits.
Other local markets have also expressed interest in accepting food stamps, Cross said. The goal is simply to make healthy food more accessible to more people, she said.
“No one’s eating the number of fruits and vegetables that they should be, but low-income people are even less likely,” Cross said.
The number of transactions using food stamps at the Vancouver Farmers Market is “definitely going up,” said Jordan Boldt, the market’s executive director. The amount of money spent through SNAP benefits at the market more than tripled between 2010 and 2014, according to market figures. Whether that’s because more people are receiving federal benefits locally, or because more people are aware of the option, is unclear, Boldt said.
Either way, it’s important to give people the ability to buy local food, Boldt said — even though the token system can be a headache at times. And the customers who use food stamps at the market may not be the same from month to month, or even week to week, he added.
“SNAP customers don’t tend to stay on SNAP for a very long time,” Boldt said. “People are often on SNAP for a transitional period in their life.”
