New contractor for food stamps helps farmers markets
When the woman stopped by Phil Munson’s stall at a Rochester, N.Y., farmers market recently, he noticed a change. A regular customer, she browsed his Fisher Hill Farm vegetables as usual and selected a few to buy. But this time, instead of offering cash for her produce, the woman paid with the wooden tokens available for people using Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, formerly known as food stamps.
Because the market accepts SNAP benefits, the woman could make her regular purchases with no difficulty. She also qualified for New York’s FreshConnect program, an incentive for SNAP beneficiaries to improve their access to fresh food. So, she got an extra $2 for every $5 she spent at the market, boosting her purchasing power by 40 percent.
Munson said the customer bought eggs that day in addition to her usual vegetables.
“She was really happy to get the benefit,” Munson recalled. “She said, ‘I can’t believe how much they gave me.’”
Federal and local officials have long said they are eager to get farmers’ produce to low-income families’ dinner tables, but for people like Munson’s customer, the ability to use SNAP benefits in the future is uncertain. While using food stamps to purchase vegetables at a farmer’s stall may seem like a simple exchange, it depends on complex government contracting requirements and increasingly sophisticated technology.
A change this year in federal contracts has left some market operators and advocates nervous. The company that provided the technology used by roughly 1,700 of the more than 7,000 farmers markets that accept SNAP benefits said it is pulling out of the business.
Earlier this year, federal officials announced they had picked a new contractor to provide equipment to help expand the number of markets that handle SNAP transactions. That contractor, when choosing the companies it would work with, did not include the Novo Dia Group, whose “Mobil Market+” app is used by those markets. Following that, Novo Dia announced it would, as of the end of July, no longer provide that service even to existing clients.
The announcement, coming at the height of the market season, took many operators and advocates by surprise and set off an urgent scramble to avoid a disruption in service. The National Association of Farmers’ Market Nutrition Programs stepped in to fund the processing platform’s operations for one month, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo later announced a short-term agreement with the company to provide service nationally through the end of February.
What happens after that remains unclear.
For some farmers, SNAP customers make up an important part of their market business.
“I think it would be noticed if it went away,” said Anita Amsler, whose family sells produce and eggs from their Oldhome Farm at the Rochester Public Market year-round.
Some advocates, however, see the current situation as an opportunity to improve the long-term prospects for the acceptance of SNAP and other nutrition benefits at farmers markets.
“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” said David Sandman, president and CEO of the New York State Health Foundation, who has written about the SNAP processing problems. He said his organization and others are interested in options for continuing to make the Nova Dia app available nationally through a public-private partnership.
The markets’ popularity among SNAP users is growing. SNAP benefit redemptions by farmers and markets grew by more than a third from 2012 to 2017, to $22.4 million, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“They are important touchstones and places for people to access their food the way other consumers do,” said Ellen Vollinger, legal director at the Food Research & Action Center, an advocacy group that works to reduce hunger among the poor.