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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Food stamps, WIC program and credit card acceptance

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  • From: "Beth Spaugh" <lists AT rhomestead.com>
  • To: "'Market Farming'" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Food stamps, WIC program and credit card acceptance
  • Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 19:36:37 -0500

Women, Infants, and Children. It is a program run through Health Departments
in New York. They give coupons for milk, eggs, etc to be redeemed at grocery
stores. The funds come from USDA to the states.

In New York, there are two USDA programs for use at Farmers Markets - WIC
and Senior coupons. Low income (the guidelines are actually pretty generous)
folks get a book of ten $2 coupons to use at qualified farmers markets for
fresh produce. In New York, vendors are supposed to grow at least half of
what they are offering, and the coupons can only be used for produce grown
in New York or neighboring states (NY, VT, MA, CT, NJ, OH, PA). In some
states the coupons can also be used at farmstands. It is up to the states to
decide.

We had a local instance year before last where they knowingly let a vendor
take coupons who was almost entirely "a peddler" because growers had dropped
out of the market but the state wanted a "farmers market" at that location
to serve the low income population. This issue has also strongly divided our
local farmers market cooperative. Some folks are convinced that customers
want a wide variety of cheap food and don't care where it comes from. Others
of us hear from customers who are amazed and distressed that "farmers" at
the farmers market can buy wholesale and resell. Our market president also
told me that he wants the variety of out of season produce to attract
customers for the non-farm vendors. Needless to say, I am not doing that
market again, and am going off the Board of our cooperative. We had to
really fight last year to get a 70-30 rule (at least 70% of what is on your
table should be made/grown by you). Several of our markets have blatantly
ignored that, and most of the folks on the Board who favor producer-only or
a 70-30 rule are giving up and going off the Board. We have one independent
producer-only market in the region (which I go to). I have thought about
opening a competing producer-only market in our main town, but don't know if
we have enough vendors and don't know that I want to commit to another
farmers market.

The issue definitely has caused hard feelings on both sides. Some bonafide
producers don't have early season stuff but instead of wanting to make
production changes so they do, just want to buy from others (mostly local)
who do.

Well, so much for a quick answer to your question.

Beth Spaugh
Rehoboth Homestead
Peru NY
rhomestead.com

-----Original Message-----
From: market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Sabina F
Swift
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 6:44 PM
To: Market Farming
Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Food stamps, WIC program and credit card
acceptance

Willie,
What does the acronym WIC stand for?
Happy New Year!
Sabina

Sabina F. Swift
Assistant Specialist



----- Original Message -----
From: Willie McKemie <mf AT austinfarm.org>
Date: Tuesday, January 3, 2006 1:17 pm
Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Food stamps, WIC program and credit card
acceptance
To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>

> On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 12:10:22PM -0900, Mike Emers wrote:
> > WIC vouchers represent about 10%-15% of our farmers' market
> sales, an
>
> I, too, am most appreciative of the WIC dollars I've received.
>
> However, the WIC farmer's market program in Texas has evolved into
> primarily a peddler's subsidy and is a subverting influence on
> honest
> farmers. Here is how it goes:
> The program is administered by the Texas Department of Health with
> bureaucrats that, for the most part, have little empathy for
> honest
> farmers and little understanding of the conflict between honest
> farmers
> and peddlers. In the Dept of Health's view, high redemption rates
> are desirable. They cut funding to areas that have low redemption
> rates and fund areas that have high redemption rates. Anyone see
> where
> this is going? The low redemption rate areas are likely to be
> those
> served only by honest farmers markets and the high rate areas are
> likely to be served by peddler markets. When the areas whose
> funding
> has been cut or threatened seek advice from the program
> administrators,
> the advice is along these lines: "Keep your markets open year-
> round,
> longer hours, more days, etc", "Sell what your customers want: out
> of
> season tomatoes, out of season peaches, never in season bananas, etc".
> In the areas where peddlers markets coexist with honest markets,
> the
> peddlers are likely to out sell to WIC customers by a factor of ten.
>
> Here is how I would characterize your typical WIC customer:
> 1) doesn't want to shop early in the day
> 2) doesn't know how to cook, or want to cook
> 3) they want food to be eaten "out of hand", apples, bananas,
> peaches,
> etc.
> Don't get me wrong; we treat our WIC customers very well and we
> attempt
> education. But, it seems hopeless.
>
> --
> Willie, ONWARD! Through the fog!
> http://counter.li.org Linux registered user #228836 since 1995
> Debian3.0/GNU/Linux system uptime 17 days 3 hours 26 minutes
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